Health Minister Tufton Reacts To Naughty IG Post By Sean Paul’s Wife
Sean Paul’s wife Jodi ‘Jinx’ Henriques had what she considers a pleasant surprise, when Minister of Health and Wellness Dr. Christopher Tufton appeared on her Instagram page on Wednesday, in response to a risqué t-shirt photo that she had posted.
“Vaxxed, waxxed and ready to climax,” the shirt, which was being sported by Jodi, read. Below it was the caption: “Wonder when the Minister gonna repost me?”
Seemingly not long after, Dr. Tufton, who is also Member of Parliament for St. Catherine North, responded, making reference only to the vaccination section of the t-shirt. “Thanks for getting vaccinated @jodijinx & for encouraging others to as well 👏,” he noted.
As a series of responses to Dr. Tufton’s comment emerged, Jodi pointed out that she was just as surprised as her followers to see that Tufton had actually seen the post and even commented.
“I frighten when I see him over here 😂,” a surprised Jodi wrote.
“@christufton this is more than encouragement 😂😂😂😂,” one follower wrote.
“But yu never tag him 😂😂😂,” an amused jamijamzz wrote, to which Jodi responded: “@jamijamzz I ketch my big fraid 😂”.
Dr. Tufton has been calling for supporters of vaccination to post pro-vaccination images of themselves and tag the Ministry of Health and himself, so that they could be reposted on both his and the Ministry’s respective social media pages.
A few weeks ago, the Minister shared images of Ding Dong and pointed out that the Ravers leader had joined the Ministry of Health’s Every Vax Counts campaign.
At the time, he unveiled a poster on his Instagram page, of the Genna Bounce artist repping for the islandwide COVID-19 vaccination campaign, noting that: “Ding Dong Ravers knows that #EveryVaxCounts when it comes to protecting yourself and those closest”. Also superimposed on Ding Dong’s image was a quote saying: “I got vaccinated because it is the way moving forward to protect myself and my family.”
However, there were mixed reactions to the announcement of Ding Dong joining the Every Vax Counts campaign. Some of the Minister’s followers congratulated him for what they said was a good example being set for the rest of the nation to follow, while others ridiculed the Ministry of Health for its decision to use Ding Dong to promote health-seeking behaviors.
Some commenters told the Minister that the only artist who had the requisite influence to get people vaccinated, was Vybz Kartel.
Mr. Lexx was also another artist who had lent his image to the campaign.
Ding Dong’s manager Romeich Major had also joined the Every Vax Counts campaign and had posted an image of himself on a Ministry of Health flyer on his Instagram page which resulted in a firestorm after he captioned the post telling his followers, among other things to: “Go teck di Bloodclaat vaccine”.
Following condemnation, Romeich, at first turned off commenting and deleted the comments. A day later he removed the post totally from his IG page.
Last month Professor Carolyn Cooper, a teacher of English Language and Literature and a specialist on culture and development, had revealed that Vybz Kartel was the ultimate deejay which Chairman of Jamaica’s National Health Fund, Howard Mitchell, was desirous of having a the forefront of the Ministry of Health’s Every Vax Counts campaign.
Professor Cooper had said that on Wednesday August 18, Mitchell told her that he had advised Dr. Tufton “to go and reason with Vybz Kartel in prison to see if he would compose a song to encourage people to get vaccinated”.
“Mitchell said he didn’t know if Kartel would do it. But he certainly knew it would be a huge hit,” Cooper wrote in her weekly column on her website. “Tufton didn’t take him on at all…,” she had added, but the Minister later told The Star that he would be willing to work with the penal system so that the Mr. Officer singer could help to promote the Ministry’s campaign.