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Health sector anticipates significant influx of trained nurses
The health sector is currently preparing for its greatest influx of nurses in a matter of months, which is expected to help strengthen the level of professionalism in the public sphere.
This notion was recently amplified by Minister of Health, Dr. Bheri Ramsaran, during an interview with this newspaper.
Health Minister, Dr. Bheri Ramsaran
He revealed that at the moment there are just under 1,000 nurses in training at various stages. The current training, the Minister said, represents the largest batch of nurses that has ever been trained at one time, a move which indicates that the government is serious about investing in qualified human resources.
“We have done a lot of training, so it is not only infrastructural investment we are doing, and so we expect to see a significant influx of nurses in the sector soon,” the Minister asserted. This strategic investment, he explained, is premised on the need to obtain value for every dollar spent, adding that “we intend to get maximum benefit for the Guyanese people from this investment…We have to look at the way we manage and we have to look at the labour discipline among this expanded labour force.”
As part of this effort, the minister stressed that efforts will be made to address the issue of punctuality of professionals within the health sector, pointing out that not all is satisfactory when it comes to the punctuality and attendance of highly and expensively trained personnel.
“We still have complaints about doctors turning up late at the health centres and leaving early; this is a management issue and it is also a work ethic issue that we are looking at.”
For this reason, better management of human resources and by extension, health facilities, has been listed high on the Minister’s agenda, so as to ensure that services are delivered at a level and a time when they are expected to be delivered, Minister Ramsaran stated.
He made reference to the Ministry’s efforts to continue with a process of upscaling the quality of health workers, pointing out that several Community Health Workers as well as Nursing Assistants are today being allowed to upgrade to the status of Single Trained Midwives.
He revealed, too, that over the years the midwifery programme has expanded significantly, creating an atmosphere for more birthing activities to be attended to by trained medical personnel.
“This allows for not just somebody who is trained, but for somebody who is trained in midwifery,” the Minister noted. This trend, he pointed out, has seen a resounding movement towards the Ministry’s ability to achieve one of the Millennium Development Goals, and at the same time, it has allowed “for us to bring better obstetrics services to our mothers in labour or expectant mothers.”
He disclosed that the value for the dollar invested over the last few years has seen a massive improvement in health infrastructure, which is in keeping with a promise which was made in the 2006 manifesto of the People’s Progressive Party/Civic in the run-up to that year’s elections.
“We have kept that promise and there are hospitals that we have either repaired significantly or expanded beyond recognition…expansion has allowed us to add significantly to the capacity of hospitals deep into indigenous communities; these were small hospitals, but the hospitals, such as the Mabaruma hospital which was almost 100 years old, now has a modern building fully equipped with a theatre, similar to Lethem.”
We have in both cases several young Guyanese doctors who are overseas trained, and who are living and working at these facilities.”
With the improvement of infrastructure across the country, which lends to equity in access of health services, the Minister said that the Ministry is now in a position to airlift roving teams to these locations to perform surgical procedures that were before only undertaken at hospitals on the coastland. In this regard, the newly appointed Minister noted, “the principle of equity to access of health care is going to be emphasized under my watch and this has already started to roll out”.
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