Campbellville Health Centre – the hallmark of ‘high quality’ primary health care

Sep 14, 2014 News

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By Sharmain Grainger

In an attempt to better address the various health challenges in a more efficient and proactive

manner, the local Ministry of Health has been embracing the concept of primary health care. With this strategic tactic, one that is recommended by the World Health Organisation (WHO), the Ministry of Health, through its various public health facilities, is better able to tackle health challenges at the level of the community.
This in essence means that the Health Ministry, aided by primary health care tactics, is able to take a vast amount of its services to the people in an area that is closer to their homes.
Moreover, the importance of health centres cannot be understated.
The delivery of primary health care services were in fact considerably lauded by Director of the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO), Dr Carissa Etienne, as she toured one of Guyana’s leading health centres during the past week.
“Increasing access to health care is what you are doing here,” she told the staffers of the Campbellville Health Centre, as she viewed and expressed satisfaction with the work done there.
Although the Health Centre has been in existence for several decades, it was only around 2012 that its operation was placed under the direct control of the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC). Previously, the facility, like most health centres in the country, fell directly under the purview of the Ministry of Health.
The Health Centre today has Dr Kampta Prashad, as the doctor in charge, and the Senior Health Visitor who holds responsibility for the facility’s daily operation, is Nurse Nalini Dass.
Although Dass only assumed the position of Senior Health Visitor just over a year ago, she related during an interview with this publication that the past few years have seen a number of significant improvements at the Health Centre.
She recalled that in addition to a more modern layout, the facility offers a wide variety of services that were not previously available there. Among those she listed are Visual Inspection with Acetic Acid (VIA), Dental and laboratory services, all of which she said “never really use to be offered here before.”
She disclosed that one of the visions for the Health Centre is to, in the near future, introduce x-ray and echocardiogram services to patients before they are referred for further care at the GPHC.
However, at the moment, one of the most interesting services offered at the Health Centre is that of counselling. Moreover, the health facility has in place a permanent Social Worker in the person of, Ms Nicole Cole.

“We are continuing to improve in terms of quality that we give to our clients,” said Dass, as she proudly spoke of a Patient Satisfaction Survey conducted last year among patients who visited the Health Centre.
The Survey was conducted by Ms Cole who, through the use of questionnaires, was able to solicit answers from the patients about their views on the work done at the Health Centre. The forthcoming answers suggested that most patients had a preference for being treated by the workers at the Health Centre, even though a vast number of them did not reside within the catchment area.
The outlined catchment area the Health Centre is tasked with offering its services is bordered by Dennis Street, Ganges Street, the Railway Embankment and Middleton Street and is intended to cater to some 9,000 individuals.
But according to Dass, “presently we work beyond our catchment area…we cover a lot more areas than we are supposed to, and we have come to understand that it is because of the high standard we have here that persons actually want to access our service.”
“We cover almost the entire of Sophia – ‘A’ Field to ‘E’ Field. Even though there is a Health Centre there, we still attend to clients who come from there,” said Dass, as she pointed out that the policy that the Health Centre embraces is to “turn no one away.”
This is especially important, she noted, because the facility is also a Care and Treatment site. The status of a care and treatment facility means that the health centre caters to the needs of persons who are HIV-positive.
“So if a client is from Linden even, and he or she doesn’t want to access the Care and Treatment service offered there and they want to come to Campbellville for that service, we can’t deny them that,” Nurse Dass emphasised.
Currently the medical team at the Health Centre is made up of five nurses, three doctors, one dentist, a dental therapist and two pharmacy assistants. Understandably, staffing is one of the challenges that the health facility is faced with. However, staffing is not viewed as a major shortcoming, as according to Nurse Dass, “our staff work above and beyond the call of duty every day.”
“Staffing is a problem everywhere you go, so that is not a major concern to us…our primary concern is to give care and that is what we do here every day,” asserted a confident Nurse Dass.
The regular operation of the Health Centre sees it commencing its operation at 08:00 hours on Monday with its Antenatal Clinic where pregnant women are attended to. Although the Clinic continues until afternoon, this period is dedicated to the enrolment of pregnant women.
Even though its operation has been rated as “very efficient”, Nurse Dass noted that another challenge may very well lie in the fact that “we have more than one clinic running concurrently…we usually have like two, three clinics at the same time, and that could be stressful on occasions.”
On Tuesdays, the Health Centre attends mainly to patients suffering from chronic illnesses, and in the afternoons, a family planning service is offered. The enrolment of infants to its Neonatal Clinic occurs on Wednesdays, as does its Care and Treatment service, which is also offered on Mondays.
While the Health Centre could each day – Monday through Saturday – be considered a ‘hive of activities’, as an outpatient service is offered daily, Nurse Dass disclosed that Thursdays and Fridays are in fact the busiest days in the operations.  These two days, she informed, are classified as “Child Health Days” even as she pointed out that the target population is noticeably high, amounting to an under-one population of 256.
And it is the view of Nurse Dass that the increasing number of patients seen at the hospital is not only linked to its growing number of services offered, but also because of the people-friendly operation that prevails.

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