Demands on health sector exceeding capacity – Health Minister

Oct 26, 2011 News

The demands on the Ministry of Health for its various services are currently at a level where it is exceeding the entity’s capacity. However, Minister of Health Dr. Leslie Ramsammy has asserted that “it is a good place to be rather than at a place where there is no demand for service.”
He informed that the Ministry of Health has 10 times the capacity than it had a decade ago in responding to all of the existing needs, and noted that while the Ministry has been able to succeed in creating demand on the arm of the marketing side, the human resource capacity has not kept pace.
“I guess that’s how marketing is and we will work harder to make sure that we meet the demand.”
With a view of addressing the limited capacity situation, Minister Ramsammy revealed that come next year there are plans to add layers to the Ministry’s Chronic Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) and its Workplace Wellness programmes. This move, he said, will see focus being directed to diabetes, hypertension, heart diseases, breast cancer and cervical cancer.
Additionally, the Minister noted that in 2012 the workplace programme and the general Ministry of Health ventures will seek to expand the general health programme, particularly those that are of interest to women while targeting a problem that men generally face.
“We are going to focus much in 2012 on one organ that men should have a great interest in…and that is the prostate.” Prostate cancer, according to the Minister, represents the number one cancer in Guyana, perhaps even surpassing the number of breast or cervical cancer cases that are reported, the Minister said.
He noted too that while there has been quiet work as it relates to developing capacity for diagnosis and intervention, “we have not been able to capture the public’s attention the same way we have been able to capture the public’s attention with breast cancer and with cervical cancer…that maybe because men like to not think about bad things…”
In fact, Dr. Ramsammy revealed that since he assumed the role of Minister of Health “more women have asked me about prostate than men; more women seem to be interested in their partners’ health than the men themselves. Many men are interested in it but they don’t want to talk about it.”
“Women talk about breast cancer all the time and they have gotten men to talk about it too. Women talk about cervical cancer and are demanding the service across the country and the men have joined them also.”
It is for this reason that the Minister said that “there are plans to bring some sort of equity in the delivery of service next year. There is need to address conditions of the name gender with equal vigour. There has not always been equal interest among the public and we will try to correct this…and that is one of the layers we will add to our health communication and public awareness programme,” he added.
According to Dr. Ramsammy, the onus is on the Ministry of Health to highlight that health is not about certain issues but rather it is about all issues. He said that in addition to the prostate, the Ministry will vastly accelerate its programme on neuro-psychiatric disorder, particularly as is relates to depression. These areas, the Minister said, will be added to the screening process at the workplace, adding that “while we cannot bring a psychiatrist to every workplace every week or every month we can in fact do simple screening that can identify persons who might need more specialist care for the wide spectrum of neuro-psychiatric disorders.”

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Demands on health sector exceeding capacity – Health Minister

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