West Demerara Hospital theatre to resume surgeries today

Feb 15, 2010 News

After being out of order for several months, the theatre at the West Demerara Regional Hospital is finally up and running. In fact, surgeries are slated to commence as soon as today, according to Medical Superintendent, Dr. Ravi Persaud.

Medical Superintendent, Dr Ravi Persaud

He revealed during an interview with this newspaper that four surgeries are expected to be carried out today by a Cuban Surgeon attached to the facility.

And even as the hospital aims to increase the amount of surgeries undertaken, there is still a need for specialist staff, Dr Persaud disclosed. “We will be looking for surgeons generally but we also need at least one specialist for Obstetrics and Gynecology.”

In the meantime though, he said that the hospital has been assured of needful assistance from the surgical residence of the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation.

Nonetheless, he noted that the onus still remains on the attending physicians to use their judgements to ascertain whether certain cases can be dealt with or if there is a need for a referral to the GPHC.

And in order to better address this situation, Dr Persaud revealed that the hospital has put in place a new system in which referrals are being filled in triplicates. This he said allows the administrative personnel to review the referrals with doctors toward determining whether anything further could be undertaken.

“We try to figure out what else Georgetown Hospital could do that we can’t. As we identify areas then we deduce whether we need to make that referral.”

And most referrals he said are based on the fact that the hospital may not be capable of some surgical procedure or due to the lack of some type of medication that is not available to the regional services.

At the moment, 11 doctors are attached to the hospital and according to Dr Persaud, there is always a doctor on duty. And given the proximity of the on-duty doctor, he asserted that no doctor should take more than three minutes to get to an emergency case.

He is confident that the general operation of the West Demerara Hospital has been vastly improved. He related that issues, the likes of water woes that had greatly impacted the health facility, are likely to be a thing of the past with the implementation of an independent water supply system. This, he said is expected to be effectively boosted with a new generator with an automatic transfer switch which was recently acquired to power the entire hospital compound.

During an interview last year, hospital officials had highlighted that there was an urgent need for a new generator. In fact, they had related then that a new generator was one of the crucial items the hospital had budgeted for, for three consecutive years.

The generator which was being utilised by the hospital was more than two years old and had developed some mechanical problems. Complaints had even reached this newspaper that once there is a blackout, night staff were forced to immediately transfer emergency cases to the Georgetown Hospital as the generator could not provide electricity to the Out-patients section of the hospital.

Since the halt of operation in the theatre, several technical persons were retained to diagnose the problem but each one had offered the hospital’s administration a different diagnosis.

This newspaper understands that the last technician who examined the theatre was drawn from the Ministry of Public Works.