Latest update April 19th, 2026 12:46 AM
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A lot is wrong with the health services
There is a vast improvement in the quality of health services being offered at the level of the state. When compared to what operated in the past, when people were hard-pressed to pay the private medical institutions because the public facilities simply could not cope with the pressure on the service.
There were few doctors and many were more concerned with their private practices. Things had reached the stage where people who go to the public hospitals were asked by the attending doctors to visit them at their private clinics.
Today, this is not as prevalent as it once was. In fact, there is no evidence that the doctors actually refer patients visiting the Georgetown Public Hospital to their private clinics. There are also more doctors, courtesy of the training programme offered by Cuba over the past six or seven years. There has been a decline in the number of properly trained nurses because of the pull by countries that offered more by way of pay, which the nurses feel, is adequate compensation. However, an attitude that is all pervading has people seeking medical attention at risk. Within recent weeks there have been deaths, two of them in the area of maternity. One of the other deaths was that of the Minister within the Ministry of Education who had gone to the institution in the wake of a road accident.
One senior government official proclaimed that the Minister was among the VIPs in the country and if she could have been afforded substandard medical treatment at a government facility then the ordinary people in the society should be afraid. And indeed they have every reason to be afraid unless there is a change in the culture that prevails. This culture sees the staff of the medical institution taking so many things for granted. Many of them ignore patients or delay seeing them until they are through with some mundane activity. Most of the doctors are little more than interns who should be supervised. The supervision is minima because the consultants are more concerned with their private practice.
It goes without saying that billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money is going into the improvement of public health facilities. The government constantly reminds the nation about the sizeable portion of the national budget that goes into health. However, with the best facilities in the world, without people to properly manage them then all the money is wasted. There is the story of a doctor who performed so poorly that the authorities were about to send him packing. He left for the United States, wrote whatever examinations he needed in order to qualify to practice there and earned kudos for the service he provided.
When asked about the radical turnaround in attitude and service, the doctor explained that he could have escaped with his shortcomings in Guyana. This is a slap in the face of the medical administration. It suggests that those placed to manage the system are failing miserably.
For example, the administration immediately accepted the verbal reports on the treatment of the now dead Education Minister. President Bharrat Jagdeo said that he was not prepared to accept that report and demanded a thorough investigation and a proper report. That second report highlighted the glaring shortcomings.
It revealed that an intern was entrusted with offering medical care to the badly injured Minister. Procedures that were recommended were ignored. In the face of this report, though, there is no report of any sanction. Something must be horribly wrong. The excuse cannot be that there is a paucity of medical skills. The government says that in the not too distant future there will be hundreds of doctors.
The doctor, who attended to the torture victim, by his own admission, was less than professional. The Guyana Medical Council recommended disciplinary action; the Health Minister is dilly-dallying; the doctor remains on the job. It is sad that people who suffer unnecessarily cannot hope to get redress in the courts. The medical profession is a closed shop and doctors are loath to testify against each other.
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