Govt. looking at public/private partnership for some medical services

Jan 09, 2011 News

Although strides have been made by the public health sector to provide a comprehensive set of renal diagnostic and treatment services for free, including peritoneal dialysis, there is still need for other services for end-stage renal diseases.
Among these are dialysis and transplant services which according to Minister of Health Dr Leslie Ramsammy, must be accessed through the Public/Private Partnership in Health (PPP/H) programme.
Government, he said, has succeeded in changing the situation where, before 2006, all of these services had to be obtained abroad.
“Now some of the dialysis services can be obtained in Guyana and a few kidney transplant operations have been done in Guyana also. But mainly, transplant operations are done in India and some of the patients access dialysis in Trinidad and Barbados.”
Included in the expansion of health care services are cardiac diagnostic and interventional treatment services. According to Minister Ramsammy, while certain diagnostic services are available for free in the public health sector, other services such as angiogram, angioplasty, stents insertion, valve replacements and by-pass surgeries are available and accessible only through the Public Private Partnership/Health (PPP/H) Programme.
Before 2008, these too were only accessed overseas.
“…Since 2008, the Government of Guyana has developed a PPP/H Programme where a significant proportion of this service is now available in Guyana. Yet, there is still a need for Guyanese to access some of this service, particularly involving complex cardiac surgery for children, overseas, mainly in India, but also in Trinidad, Barbados, Cuba and the USA.”
In addition the public health sector is providing free surgeries and chemotherapy for cancer patients, Minister Ramsammy said. However, some complex surgeries, particularly those involving the brain, chemotherapy and radiotherapy are only available through the PPP/H Programmes, he added.
Since 2006, some of these services which could have been accessed only overseas are now available locally in Guyana.
The public health service has also been adequately addressing eye diseases. According to the Minister, services relating to conditions such as cataracts are now routinely available for free. However, he noted that there is growing need for a number of more sophisticated and complex kinds of eye surgeries that are slowly becoming available to Guyanese through the partnership programmes both locally and overseas.
Added to this, Diagnostic Imaging Services have also become a regular feature as according to the Minister certain kinds of diagnostic imaging services such as MRI and CT Scans are available in Guyana in the private sector.
“While such services were only available overseas before 2001, these services are mostly now accessed in Guyana through the PPP/H Programme. Ultrasound is now also available in the public sector for free, but sometimes patients must access ultrasound services through the private sector as part of the PPP/H programme,” he added.
Even orthopaedic services are now being made available free of cost, Minister Ramsammy revealed, adding that the public sector provides a wide range and scope of free orthopaedic services in the public sector which is constantly expanding.
However, he noted that still, there are services such as hip replacement and spine surgery that are not part of the free public sector services that must also be obtained via partnership programmes.
Other partnership programmes include the provision of prosthetic devices for hearing losses (hearing aid), for physical disabilities such as artificial limbs. And the Government, Minister Ramsammy said, had assisted almost 400 persons last year to secure medical assistance.
Help was given to 396 persons who requested financial support in order to access services in Guyana and overseas. Region Four, he said, accounted for most of the persons with 202 representing 51 percent.
The numbers of persons from the other regions were one from Region One, nine from Region Two, five from Region Seven, eight from Region Ten, 13 from Region Five, 23 from Region Six and 43 from Region Three.

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Govt. looking at public/private partnership for some medical services

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