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GPHC in urgent need for critical drugs
Patients are being sent home and surgeries postponed due to the shortage of critical drugs at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC), a senior official said yesterday.
Dr. George Norton, Head of the Ophthalmology Department, confirmed reports that surgical sutures, operating materials, medications and “kits” to perform blood test are among the items currently unavailable at the hospital.
Dr. George Norton
This publication was told that medications are not being administered to patients although these were prescribed on their charts.
“When a doctor tells a patient that they required two injections a day, the patient would come and say they only get one, sometimes they don’t get any over the weekend and it is not because doctors are not making requisitions… it is because the items are not being supplied to us,” Norton disclosed.
Norton is also the Shadow Minister of Health in the National Assembly for the main opposition, A Partnership For National Unity.
This publication was told that doctors at the facility have to “make do” with whatever the pharmacist tells them is available.
At the faculty’s Low Vision Department yesterday, surgeries for patients with “crossed eye” were on the verge of being suspended because there were no sutures.
“We use what we were not suppose to use- which is endangering the patient’s welfare,” Norton stated.
He explained that surgery to the eye requires doctors to have “certain types of needle, with a certain size and shape”.
Use of wrong size needles can cause damage and even excessive bleeding, the official said.
Government has been spending billions on drugs and medical supplies annually. Opposition parties last week called for a full blown investigation into the purchase of drugs and medical supplies by government after complaints that one particular company was getting the bulk of the contracts. There were instances of unusually high sums being paid for some drugs despite it being available far cheaper elsewhere.
Dr. Norton, whose job includes ordering medication for the eye clinic at the GPHC, said that sometimes there are eye drops in the pharmacy which doctors do not even know about. “Sometimes we use what the pharmacy has available- how they get it I don’t know. Who ordered it, I don’t know. Where is it coming from, I don’t know. Sometimes there are some eye drops that I’ve never seen or never heard about, but we have to make use of it.”
He said that the hospital’s administration is aware of the shortage because requisitions were made for every item which the hospital needs.
Another doctor, who asked not to be named, said that many times surgeries had to be canceled because the equipment is “rusty” or because a particular medication, which is required to do the surgery, was “out of stock.”
The facility’s Chief Executive Officer, Michael Khan, when contacted yesterday for a comment said that he is not sure what the hospital is short of and promised to investigate and provide an in-depth report to this newspaper.
(Romila Boodram)
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