2012 good year for Health

Feb 24, 2013 News

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— Dr. Bheri Ramsaran

By Leon Suseran

Minister of Health, Dr. Bheri Ramsaran, has said that 2012 has been a good year for health in Guyana in spite of challenges. Several new Cuban-trained Guyanese doctors were added to the complement, “allowing us to put more doctors in more places”.
Additionally, several post-graduate programmes were launched “which will see us training those doctors further to become specialists in Guyana”. The programmes, he reminded, are not home-grown “wishy- washy” programmes, Rather they are directly advised, supervised and monitored by international centres of excellence, for example in Canada and U.S.A.
Hundreds of nurses were trained, “adding to the stock, including the introduction of two shifts in the nursing school in Georgetown which means that we will have a better ratio of teacher-to-student therefore addressing some concerns about the quality, and at the same time, making classroom sizes smaller.”
Upgrading was done to the Resource Centre at the Georgetown School of Nursing, adding more computers and hooking them up to the internet, to promote independent self-study. This process, he stated, will continue this year.
“We have maintained our vaccination programme well—Guyana has among the best—and we have coverage of a wide-flung population of up to 98 per cent in the routine vaccines”. Dr. Ramsaran stated, too, that the HPV Vaccine was introduced in January, preventing occurrences of cervical cancer in the later years of women, “and is being administered during the age- group 9-11”.

Region Six, he noted, has shown a very enthusiastic uptake or acceptance of the new vaccine.
“Over the past four or five years, we built ten new hospitals: Diamond, Leonora, Suddie, Mahaicony, National Ophthalmology Hospital, Lethem, Mabaruma….we have done significant repairs to the Georgetown Public Hospital itself—some sections are practically new—big additional stocks of bed space and capacity”.
Significant work, too, has been effected to the C.C. Nicholson and Moruca Hospitals, “so we have to make sure that we exploit those facilities greatly.” Over the past five years, he noted that significant monies have been invested in the West Demerara Regional Hospital, in terms of better transformers, better walls, et cetera.
“So we are getting more work now, starting from October last year at that hospital…more surgeries for example the result of that investment, we have had about 20 or so caesarean- sections done at that hospital, so that’s 20 headaches less for the GPHC”.
With more doctors and nurses available, he is hoping to extend the opening time of the health centres across the country. He mentioned Parika, for example, a densely-populated, commercial area, will see its health centre being test-piloted in that the facility will have services beyond 16:00 hours.
“So people can go up to 6:00pm and who knows, up to 8:00pm. That is the way we are going to utilize the stock of doctors that we have and infrastructure that we already have”. New Intensive Care Units (ICU) for neonates consisting of twelve incubators were also added to the GPHC along with specifically internationally- trained nurses to use the units.
“This means that we should be having fewer deaths among the neonates who would have been born underweight, premature or with birth defects”. Similar equipment he stated was also delivered a few days ago at the West Demerara Regional Hospital, and shortly, to the Linden Hospital.
The equipment is being donated by a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO), headed by an overseas-based Guyanese, Dr.  Narsingh. As for the equipment for the New Amsterdam Hospital, Dr. Ramsaran stated that the donors do not believe that the New Amsterdam Hospital is ready for such equipment, “and it’s there waiting for them to put things in order, so that Berbice neonates can also enjoy that service.”
“We can’t continue giving resources and they are either mismanaged or not managed”, he stated.
He noted that the Ministry of Health’s “longstanding partner”, Global Fund, was able to distribute 16,000 nets in the malaria areas in Guyana.
The government, he stated, will add to that with the introduction of some 50,000 bed nets. Last November, President Donald Ramotar visited Lethem and distributed 1,000 “specially- treated nets…impregnated with insecticide which kills the mosquito that carries malaria and dengue but which does not harm humans”.
The nets, Dr. Ramsaran stated, are expensive. They cost as much as US$50 to procure, transport, store and distribute, “but it’s worth the expense”.
Government, he stated, has bought 50,000 such nets and in this year’s budget, and there is hope to procure a similar number. “Malaria is very prevalent in Regions One, Seven, Eight, some parts of Region Ten…very little in Region Nine currently, so we have started the distribution of these nets.
“We have been in partnership with the Guyana Gold and Diamond Miners’ Association whereby 15,000 nets were distributed to the miners in the hinterland”.
The Regional Democratic Councils (RDCs) of Regions Seven and Eight were also given 5,000 nets in addition to the 15,000 given to the miners’ association. The GGMC was also given 2,000 nets along with a similar number to the Guyana Forestry Commissions (GFC).
“Currently, there are about 120,000 people in the mining areas in our country because the price of gold is just around $4000 per ounce today, “whereas in 2008, it was probably US $114—a big difference—so people are going there, risking and we have to go, so we are sending the nets and we are not doing it by ourselves; we are using the resources that exist there”.

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