New health minister calls infectious diseases hospital a ‘shell’
-says facility nowhere ready to accept COVID-19 patients
Newly-appointed Minister of Health Dr Frank Anthony yesterday stated that the recently commissioned $1.6b infectious diseases hospital is a “shell” and major work needs to be done at the hospital and in the health sector to better Guyana’s response to COVID-19.
Dr Anthony, moments after he was sworn in as Minister of Health, spoke with members of the media regarding the new government’s plans to tackle the spread of the novel coronavirus.
The new health minister stated that the infectious diseases hospital which was commissioned recently is not ready to house COVID-19 patients, as there is no staffing structure, no equipment, and if the facility is to be utilised, more renovations need to be done.
“The former president (David Granger) launched this hospital, there is no staffing structure in place… the doctors who would be working there, none of them have been told, they don’t know where they’re coming from. At a minimum you will need about 20 doctors to be there, the technicians, none of that is there,” he said.
Dr Anthony went on to say, “In terms of medical equipment, you will need things like ventilators, none of that is there, so basically as I said, we have a shell and if we are going to be able to utilise that we have to be able to do some more renovations.” According to the minister, things like oxygen and centralised suction along with the procurement of equipment like beds, ventilators and much more are needed to make the hospital ready for the intake of COVID-19 patients.
Currently, he said, an assessment is being done and he would have to go over the assessment and ensure that whatever is there is accurate and he will further advise President Irfaan Ali on the way forward.
“As it is now, if there are (severely ill) patients they will still have to go to the Georgetown Public Hospital COVID unit and until we get these things in place, we can’t place anybody there” the minister said. He mentioned that a technical team will have to assess the air circulation in the building as airflow within the rooms of hospitals of that type need to be limited so as to ensure that cross-contamination does not take place.
Testing
The health minister noted that even as COVID19 cases continue to rise and the hotspots are now Regions Seven, Eight and Nine, the challenges he discovered in those areas relate to testing and the ability to test.
“What I discovered is that the ministry previously had sent [testing] kits out to the region, when they do the swabbing in the region, they would normally collect it and they would have those samples there sitting for a week before those can come to Georgetown and then when it comes to Georgetown, the capacity at the national lab is quite limited,” Dr. Anthony noted.
“Our capacity to test has been limited because at the national reference lab we have some very old machines, one of the machines that is there goes back to the HIV programme… and that has been repurposed to do the PCR’s (Polymerase Chain Reaction) for COVID” Minister Anthony disclosed to members of the media while adding that there is nothing wrong with the machines however, the time that it takes to complete those tests is quite lengthy. “In this epidemic you have to detect, isolate and treat and so when you detect, if you take too long to detect and the person is positive… by the time you get to them they (would have) infected a lot of people,” he pointed out.
Additionally his ministry will have to go about sourcing the PCR testing machines and as such he mentioned they are working on it even as he declined to give a specific time frame as to when that would occur.
Response in hinterland regions
While he mentioned that a special focus will be placed on the hinterland regions, he said that the
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