Gov’t’s healthcare programme lacks equity in rural areas
The delivery of proper heath care services in Guyana has languished over the years and is a tale of “Two Guyanas” where rural areas (where mostly PPP supporters live) were neglected and you had to travel to the city to obtain better treatment and services. The drug bond scandal under the PNC/AFC is reflective of the corruption in the health sector, including staff stealing medicine and medical supplies, depriving the system of vital resources. Lack of doctors/nurses/trained specialists (for example, no trained ultrasound technician at the Suddie Hospital for five months), drug procurement problems, poor systems of inventory controls, the need to destroy medicines because of a high rate of expiration, have impoverished the health care system. (See “Govt. begins dumping over $742M worth of expired drugs left by Coalition,” KN, Nov. 21, 2020). If you did not have money to go to a private hospital, you are likely to die in the Government facility.
So, the Government must be commended for its plan to build seven new hospitals. The PNC/AFC, playing politics, had defeated the PPP’s plan to build a specialty hospital. The urgency of a decent health care system may not have been a priority for politicians because they can access foreign treatment at the taxpayers’ expense. A Mr. David recently wrote, “Guyana is a fractured healthcare system that needs major surgery. Try summoning an ambulance, an ambulette, or an Emergency Medical Transport (EMT) to take a sick, injured, or disabled person to the hospital and you will experience the futility of your efforts.” Our experiences in Region 6 give an insight into how bad our system operates. In health clinics -badly kept and grass uncut - you get few services and are usually referred to a real hospital. If you go to the Black Bush Hospital, they may refer you to Port Mourant Hospital which has been a long running joke, as it had been a decrepit, ill-equipped, and poorly maintained facility that offers very few services. Whether you go to the Black Bush, Port Mourant, or Skeldon Hospital, you eventually end up at the New Amsterdam Hospital, and then you may get a referral to the Georgetown Hospital.
You can die in that merry-goround. For a rural person, having to go to Georgetown to access treatment is traumatic because it consumes time, you are not familiar with the city, and travel and accommodation will be difficult and expensive. Rural folks pay more for everything, compared to city/Region 4 folks. Those with lots of money can access the private Anamayah
Hospital at Belvedere. When people go to the clinics and hospitals, many times medicines are still not available, and you are given a prescription to go search for it and buy it yourself. My friend George told me he took blood tests and after a month, his clinic said they had not received the results. What I find very sad is when parents have to make appeals in the newspapers for financial help to obtain life-saving treatment abroad for their children. This should not happen when we are the richest country in CARICOM (but our currency is lower than Haiti’s), while the Government allows the oil companies to fetch away the bulk of our oil wealth. People need to understand if we do not renegotiate the oil contract to get more money, we will have to wait a long time to see any widespread improvements in our lifetime.
The announcements of many new hotels does nothing for poor people in the villages. I noticed the Government is partnering with Hess and Mount Sinai. We need more disclosures of this arrangement. Make the documents available on the website. While the USA has good technical facilities and services, health care is the biggest scam there. Their “for-profit” system is designed to gouge consumers. Health care and medicines are very expensive and can make you bankrupt. The medical lobby is the most powerful. Republicans are able to convince their constituencies that universal (free) health care is bad for you. The first thing a medical provider wants to know is whether you have medical insurance. In Dubai/United Arab Emirates, an employer bringing in workers, must provide health insurance as a condition for a work permit to be issued. With foreign people coming in to work in Guyana, do we have such a rule? We need to watch the growing trend to privatise health care. Which friends of the Government stand to benefit when they do that? We must expand universal health care.
We need dialysis clinics everywhere, in every region, and should have more than one such facility in large regions such as Region 6. We need laboratory services, including all diagnostic imaging, MRI, ultrasound, xrays, scans, occupational and physical therapy in the areas where we live. Government must stop putting everything in New Amsterdam. We need equal services in the Upper Corentyne, Central Corentyne and New Amsterdam. What is Government’s plan for the current Skeldon Hospital? Why can we not upgrade and modernize the Port Mourant Hospital which is in the heart of a large population area, also a PPP votes’ farm? How about adding a US-type “Urgent Care” component to some community health centres? The Government is on the right track with the seven new hospitals, but a lot more remains to be done, and should be accelerated. Renegotiate the oil contracts so we can get more money to do all these things. Everything needs improvement!
Sincerely,
Dr. Jerry Jailall