Gail Alexan­der

Health Min­is­ter Dr Fuad Khan says he has asked Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) MP Dr Amery Browne if he was in­ter­est­ed in serv­ing as tech­ni­cal co-or­di­na­tor of the Na­tion­al AIDS Co-or­di­nat­ing Com­mit­tee (NACC), a po­si­tion Browne once held un­der the past PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion.But Browne has called for Khan to fol­low pro­ce­dure on the is­sue.Khan said yes­ter­day he was seek­ing peo­ple who were ca­pa­ble at the job "and there aren't many", adding he had asked Browne about it re­cent­ly.

The pro­gramme was shift­ed from the Prime Min­is­ter's Of­fice to the Health Min­istry re­cent­ly.Khan said Browne had pre­vi­ous­ly worked with the pro­gramme and he was aware that Browne had made a lot of progress in the field over 2003 to 2007.The min­is­ter said the job was pre­vi­ous­ly held by Dr Bri­an Ar­mour, but he left to be­come chief coun­ty med­ical of­fi­cer.

"So there's a gap to be filled ur­gent­ly and I've in­quired of Dr Browne if he'd be in­ter­est­ed in head­ing the pro­gramme along with Dr Col­in Fur­longe. My re­spon­si­bil­i­ty is to seek the best and Browne is very good," Khan said­Say­ing he hadn't of­fered Browne the job per se, Khan said if Browne was in­ter­est­ed he would have to go through the nec­es­sary in­ter­views and all for­mal process­es.

Asked how this could work, with Khan as Health Min­is­ter and Browne an Op­po­si­tion MP, Khan said he ex­pect­ed Browne would do his po­lit­i­cal job, crit­i­cise him as min­is­ter when nec­es­sary and do the na­tion­al HIV cen­tre job as he would have to.Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, Browne said: "My hard work and achieve­ments as the tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor of the Na­tion­al AIDS Co-or­di­nat­ing Com­mit­tee are well known with­in the re­gion.

"In close part­ner­ship with then chair­man An­gela Lee Loy, we ini­ti­at­ed and es­tab­lished a ded­i­cat­ed team that made sig­nif­i­cant strides against HIV, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with a wide range of non-gov­ern­men­tal agen­cies, gov­ern­men­tal de­part­ments and re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al bod­ies."Oth­er coun­tries were ac­tu­al­ly vis­it­ing our shores to learn how to rapid­ly scale-up a na­tion­wide aware­ness and co­or­di­na­tion pro­gramme," he said.

"It was a sad day when this Gov­ern­ment dis­band­ed the NACC and se­ri­ous­ly set back our na­tion­al re­sponse to HIV." "I'm pleased Min­is­ter Khan seems in­ter­est­ed in strength­en­ing the na­tion­al re­sponse at this time, but he knows ful­ly well that as a health pro­fes­sion­al I don't en­gage in tele­phone deals, se­cret con­tracts or ne­go­ti­a­tion via me­dia.

"If he wish­es my pro­fes­sion­al as­sis­tance in a non-po­lit­i­cal ca­pac­i­ty or the in­put of any oth­er ex­pe­ri­enced health pro­fes­sion­als, he'd fol­low prop­er pro­ce­dure and trig­ger a trans­par­ent process with­in the min­istry."If any oth­er ap­proach is tak­en he could find him­self ac­cused of con­jur­ing this po­ten­tial re­cruit­ment as a mere dis­trac­tion away from some of the on­go­ing HR chal­lenges with­in the gov­ern­ment ser­vice."