Latest update May 22nd, 2026 12:38 AM
Health Minister seeks to ‘shore up’ plans to twin hospitals
Holding steadfast to plans to improve the operations of the West Demerara Regional Hospital while at the same time removing pressure from the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC), Minister of Health, Dr Bheri Ramsaran, has been spearheading moves to twin the two facilities.
The initiative was in fact a brainchild of the Minister and was amplified during a GPHC board meeting where the issue of efficiency and efficacy at both facilities were highlighted.
Health Minister, Dr Bheri Ramsaran
The Minister accompanied by Chief Medical Officer, Dr Shamdeo Persaud, recently paid a visit to the West Demerara facility as the first step in realising the twinning move.
However, Minister Ramsaran said that the plan was not readily welcomed. “There was some degree of resistance but we are overcoming it…so we will be able to have the capacity of the West Demerara Hospital linked with that of the Central Hospital.”
Having embraced the idea, the Minister said that even the Board members of the GPHC had come to an agreement that a visit to the West Demerara facility was necessary.
“It has now been accepted that we can share. For example, why should two women be on a single bed at the GPHC when we have underutilised facilities in a hospital just over the river where in the past three or four years we spent about $200 million to upgrade it? We have done work on the wards, the theatre and we were even able to get designated transformers from GPL for this hospital,” informed the Minister.
Additionally, he disclosed that there are currently two staff members at the West Demerara Hospital who are capable of performing anaesthetic duties. This, according to him, will aid the moves to decant services even as he alluded to a decision he made last year to commence a programme called ‘Fight Against Fibroids’.
The programme, he said, was designed to track women with fibroids by obtaining their records from the GPHC. These women, he disclosed, have been patients at the city hospital for several years and through the programme, have since been taken over to the West Demerara Hospital for surgeries which were never attempted there before.
Other surgical operations such as the removal of hernias and hysterectomy, which is undertaken mainly for removal of a diseased womb, are also done at the Region Three health facility.
The twinning plans, according to Minister Ramsaran, will also cater to increased surgery time since “if you don’t have theatre time at the GPHC you can simply move your surgeons and their support staff over to our other hospital.
“So our visit to the West Demerara Hospital was to shore-up or strengthen this twinning initiative and share on our assets across the country and not be cocooned.”
The Health Minister, in an earlier interview, had assured that criticisms will not halt plans to improve the operation of the West Demerara Hospital. He, at the time, had expressed conviction that the hospital is poised for improvement in the face of recent heavy condemnations, particularly from the media.
“I think the hospital is doing better but it still faces some criticism…I say it is doing better because the theatre services are working better and the wards are being redone; we are even planning on taking patients from the Georgetown Public Hospital there.”
This move, the Minister said, would be characterised by some patients on the public hospital’s waiting list being transferred to the West Demerara Hospital. This is especially true for patients suffering from fibroids and hernias, Minister Ramsaran added.
He said, too, that many of the fistulae that are done to facilitate dialysis are also done at the West Demerara Hospital and not only at the GPHC as many believe. This, he disclosed, is strategically done to take pressure off the GPHC.
The decision to twin the two hospitals is a representation of Government’s plans to utilise its resources more rationally, Minister Ramsaran said, adding that “we are looking to see how they can synergise…we have constantly been looking at decanting patients after surgery and such things will be done to better utilise the hospitals’ capacities.”
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