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Enough thought did not go into Port Mourant Eye Centre – new Health Minister
If newly elected Minister of Public Health, Dr. George Norton, is to have his way, the Port Mourant Ophthalmology Centre will be a transformed tertiary level institution.
Dr. George Norton, Minister of Public Health
The Centre, which spawned from collaborations between the Governments of Guyana and Cuba under the People’s Progressive Party’s administration, was designated a facility to offer specialised eye care.
According to Dr.Norton, who ahead of his recent ministerial appointment was the Head of Ophthalmology at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC) and at one time was the Head of Ophthalmology of the Ministry of Health, while he has no problem with the collaboration with Cuba he was troubled by the way that the Ophthalmology Centre was implemented.
“I am going to be frank, blatant, blunt…I studied in Cuba, I have no chip on my shoulder for Cuba; Cuba is great but I could not imagine that Cuba could come into Guyana develop a so-called tertiary level ophthalmic centre and not one day was I ever invited by any of the authorities to either visit or to be told about the actual administrative running of that centre,” Dr. Norton disclosed.
It wasn’t too long after the Centre became operational, the Health Minister said, that he learnt that patients were being referred to the GPHC on a regular basis. “As far as I am concerned it was not something better than the Georgetown Public Hospital Eye Department.
“It might have been complementary in the sense that what they couldn’t deal with they sent down to us.”
The Health Minister said that it was worrying, too, when he became aware that very expensive equipment were procured for the Centre and these were not even being utilised. He intimated that of concern was the fact that there was a lack of Guyanese doctors who were trained specifically to serve there.
“We needed to have Guyanese doctors trained under the Cuban doctors there…and I don’t think that we ever had that,” speculated Dr. Norton.
Moreover, Dr. Norton has said that his only hope for the facility at this point is for it to function as a tertiary level Eye Centre.
According to him one of the early problems of the facility is in fact its location. He is convinced that Georgetown, the capital city, might have been a suitable location for this facility since it has the majority of the population and is more easily accessed even for those persons coming from hinterland communities.
Aware of the travelling challenge, the former administration has put in place transportation arrangements to support persons seeking the eye care service at Port Mourant.
But this was no answer to the problem as seen by Dr. Norton. “The situation became ridiculous to the point where patients were searched for in Georgetown, in front of Fogarty, to be taken to the Port Mourant Hospital…somewhere along the line enough thought was not placed into that institution.”
But while he intends to pay some keen attention to the facility, Dr. Norton asserted that it may not be realistic to sustain the travelling arrangements. “I don’t know how much it is going to function because it takes a lot of money to take patients up to Port Mourant and bring them back…”
Dr. Norton shared his conviction that the travelling arrangement was reduced to a mere mockery by members of the now parliamentary opposing side. At the time he was alluding to the fact that “one (former) Minister stood up in Parliament and said that after they take the patients up to Port Mourant and their eyes are operated on for cataract they bring them over the Berbice River Bridge so that they can sightsee.”
“That is making a mockery of the situation because if you operate on a person with cataract patients can’t remove their bandages (from their eyes);” explained Dr. Norton as he added that “if that is the approach to eye care then something is wrong.”
Even as consideration is given to improve the Port Mourant facility, Dr. Norton said that he envisions some very interesting things for eye care. He was at the time making reference to a piece of equipment at the GPHC that can do both post cataract and glaucoma surgeries.
As part of the evolution of eye care, he disclosed that already diabetic retinopathy is being offered at the GPHC.
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