Health Services Director threatens police involvement over regional drugs theft

Jul 05, 2018 News

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Low circulation of critical items for patients happens because of pilfering of drugs and medical supplies in the public health sector. This was the informed deduction of Director of Regional Health Services [RHS], Dr. Kay Shako.

Dr. Shako, speaking to the countries Regional Health Officers [RHOs] at the start of a three-day healthcare review session at the Mainstay Resort, asserted that “ending theft and wastage of drugs and medical supplies can help improve Guyana’s healthcare delivery system.”
Added to this, she said that there will also be significant improvements if bad behaviour among some RHOs is stopped.
On the issue of the theft of drugs, Dr. Shako said with conviction that the Regional Health Services is in fact aware of those behind the reprehensible behaviour.
“We know who you are,” Dr. Shako said, warning participants to not be surprised when the police get involved.
She also expressed her displeasure in what she described as “the piles of expired drugs” in the healthcare system because of poor forecasting by RHOs and in some instances, a delay in the arrival of drugs in the 10 administrative regions.
Inefficiencies in healthcare delivery, the RHS Director said, also threatens firm disciplinary measures against some RHOs who are unnecessarily absent from duty. “Stop the madness,” Dr. Shako warned participants as she addressed the issue of absenteeism.
She also chastised some RHOs who are inelegantly dressed for work while there are others smoke and/or are drunk on the job.
Dr. Shako is also peeved that some RHOs allow some health programmes to collapse completely under their watch while others are on the verge of fragmentation.
“Put people in strategic positions to help monitor programmes [and] ensure there is succession planning in all Regions, because you cannot do it alone,” Dr. Shako counseled the RHOs.
She faulted them also for allowing public health facilities to operate without proper licensing, disclosing that the Finance Ministry queried whether the “Riot Act” was read to erring RHOs.
By Friday, all RHOs will be expected to complete the necessary documents to ensure the illegality ends forthwith, Dr. Shako asserted.
Minister of Communities, Mr. Ronald Bulkan, in brief remarks at the opening the RHOs meeting lauded Dr. Shako for her frank discourse.
“Dr. Shako read the ‘Riot Act’ to our health professionals and I congratulate her for her frankness and her forthright delivery…because too often in discourses of this nature we tend to gloss over the inadequacies and the deficiencies in the system and to embellish, so even though she did highlight the many successes, she was not shy in addressing the defects where they are,” Bulkan said.
Among the notable gains in the health sector highlighted by the RHS Director was that for 2017, the RHS system was able to deploy more than 20 new Community Health Workers [CHWs]. The CHWs were sent to Lethem which is located in the Upper Takutu/Upper Essequibo [Region Nine] area and also in Barima/Waini (Region One).
Dr. Shako noted that 21 Medexes were deployed across the 215,000 square kilometres of the country while four medical specialists – a General Surgeon, a Paediatrician, an Internal Medicine expert and a Radiologist – were sent to Region One.
Over the review period, nurses also agreed to take up posts at Barima/Waini; Pomeroon/Supenaam; Essequibo Islands/West Demerara; Mahaica/Berbice; Cuyuni/Mazaruni; Potaro/Siparuni and Upper Takutu/Upper Essequibo.
Dr. Shako argued for the salaries of physicians in the public sector to be on par with that earned by doctors employed at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation [GPHC] noting that upgrades by the Ministry remove much burden from the sole referral hospital in the capital.
“There will be a greater stress on the use of biomedical equipment in the public sector this year and will be accelerated in 2019,” said Dr. Shako, as she defended the RHS budget last week before Finance Ministry officials.
In the evolution of Guyana’s healthcare system some sectors in the country’s hinterland are catching up with the coast, RHS statistics show.
The three-day RHS review programme will identify and remove gaps in the healthcare system to help fulfill its theme ‘Collaboratively we build a resilient healthcare system that is acceptable, accessible, timely and appropriate to meet the needs of every person in Guyana’.
The RHS programme is founded on the pillars of Guyana’s Health Vision 2020 and to ‘Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages ‘which is the Sustainable Development Goal number three of the Millennium Development Goals [MDGs] set by the UN.

 

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