Catching up in the medical field

Sep 25, 2014 Editorial

The world of medicine is not confined to any one country. There have been drugs that were manufactured to cure certain ailments and some of these are now commonplace. At the same time, new drugs are emerging and these too are becoming common around the world.
When the AIDS virus struck, the world was in confusion. That was some thirty years ago, long after the world fashioned its first test tube baby and after it had made an animal from the cells of a parent in a system called cloning.
While there has not been serious pursuit of cloning largely because of ethical grounds the same cannot be said of other medical developments. Of course, if we were to look at cloning what we would find is the creation of a human with all the characteristics of the parent, right down to the physical appearance.
The main argument is that man would be playing God and the consequences could be far reaching. But medical experts opted to look at the so-called benefits. They argued that there could be a ready supply of body parts in the event of surgery. And the possibilities are endless. Right now there are long lines for kidneys, hearts and even limbs, to the extent that the production of prosthetics is big business.
But it is in the pharmaceutical industry that we see perhaps the greatest advancements. Syphilis, once a killer, is now treatable as are so many diseases that once meant a death sentence. When the first AIDS case was identified the victim merely died; there was no cure.
Today, with a regimen of drugs affected people can live long healthy lives, the same way renal failure victims live long and healthy lives. Dialysis is a way of life. But not so long ago, this was a service that Guyana never offered. The then Heath Minister Gail Teixeira said that the reagents were too expensive, had a short shelf life and could not be stored because Guyana did not have many cases of renal failure.
She was wrong, and many people died. Today dialysis is as commonplace as cold medicine and the country has far more renal failure cases than people once believed. The fact is that with private involvement Guyana’s medical development is moving apace, almost reaching levels that the foreign countries once monopolies.
And this is how it should be. Many of our doctors have received training overseas and they returned with skills previously unknown in this country. Some remained overseas and became leading surgeons and cardiologists who would from time to time come to Guyana and offer of their services.
Unfortunately, the report is that the government-run medical institutions do not seem too keen to accommodate the skilled visitor. Many reasons have been offered, prime among them is that the foreigner is here to upset the kingdom created by those who now head facilities. It is human nature to be selfish, to protect one’s gains. But it is basic sense to use all available skills for development.
The nation still remembers the first kidney transplants in Guyana. This was a landmark for medicine in Guyana. They were performed at the Georgetown Public Hospital but something had to be horribly wrong for this surgery to be removed to a private medical institution. The complaint is that the authorities at the medical institution are not readily cooperative with the visiting surgeons.
Perhaps there was good reason because it is now said that the mortality rate is higher than when the surgeries were performed at the public institution. Whatever the case, the country is about to perform even more kidney transplants because the groundwork has been laid and more surgeons, many of them Guyanese, are prepared to come for stints.
We are now taking the bold step into the world of in vitro fertilization. Thirty-six years after the world saw the first such baby, Guyana recorded its first. This is an achievement that bodes well for people who want to be parents but who have medical issues. And the reports are that there could be more than fifty more in the coming months.

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Catching up in the medical field

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