GPHC commissions US$1M Paediatric Intensive Care Unit

Jul 30, 2018 News

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– represents another step in the advancement of paediatric cardiac care

By Sharmain Grainger

It was long in coming but it is finally here!
The Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation [GPHC] is now home to a Paediatric Critical Care Unit, which has boosted the public health facility’s capacity to cater to some of the nation’s most critically ill children.
The 16-bed facility also houses Intensive Care [ICU] and High Dependency [HDU] Units. Situated in the northern section of the hospital’s compound, it will essentially complement the hospital’s Paediatric Surgery programme.
Already some 24 young lives have utilised the state-of–the–art facility, which was completed to the tune of approximately US$1 million, which represents investments from the Ministry of Public Health/GPHC and the International Children’s Heart Foundation [ICHF], which has been lending its paediatric heart surgery support to Guyana through the GPHC for the past three years.
ICHF, which is also known as the Baby Heart Foundation, is an organisation which has as its mission to “bring the skills, technology and knowledge to cure and care for children with congenital heart disease in developing nations…”
The lives of many children, with varying levels of heart complications, have been saved through this programme, which is offered free of cost at the GPHC.
Ahead of the commissioning of the facility, ICHF experts with their local counterparts conducted 24 procedures – 12 open-heart surgeries and 12 cardiac catherisations.

Heading the GPHC Paediatric Surgery Programme is Paediatric Surgeon, Dr. Marissa Seepersaud – the Baby Heart Foundation’s Country Coordinator and the Coordinator of the Paediatric Critical Care Unit, who along with her team, have been able to benefit from the training and unprecedented support over the years.
The support from ICHF has essentially helped Dr. Seepersaud and team to fulfil what can only be deemed a passion – helping to save the lives of children. They have over the years worked tirelessly to learn the intricacies of saving the lives of children who otherwise would have required medical care overseas or died because of the lack of capable medical attention.
According to Dr. Seepersaud, the realisation of the facility is in fact a good example of what team work can do.
“This is the culmination of a lot of hard work from a lot of people. I have had a lot of support and encouragement from the Baby Heart Foundation and also from a lot of local physicians and nurses to try to push this forward, because we all recognised that Guyanese children also deserve the very best of care when they are critically ill, whether from an infection or recovering from surgery, or whatever else is making them really ill.”
“They require the expertise of properly qualified and trained nurses and support staff to get them better,” said Dr. Seepersaud, as she promised to continue to lead her committed team forward.

Among the team members whose acquired expertise will be fully utilised in the new facility are: Sister Marissa Singh – the Nurse Manager for Paediatrics and the Baby Heart Unit; Nurse Christian Rodrigues – the Nurse Manager of the facility’s HDU; and Dr. Tariq Davidson – the Doctor in Charge of the HDU.
But there are other crucial personnel whose services are required to ensure the facility operates optimally.
“It is not just the physicians and the nurses, but everybody, from those who help us to clean the space to those who help to take care of the instruments in the OR [Operating Room] and assist us every step of the way,” Dr. Seepersaud asserted.
Speaking at the commissioning of the new facility Friday, ICHF’s Chief Executive Officer of Clinical Operations, Dr. Rodrigo Soto, said, “We have been working for three years basically developing a paediatric cardiac programme and at the same time a paediatric intensive care unit.”
He is certainly pleased that the efforts were not in vain, and were fully supported by the administrators of the GPHC and the Ministry of Public Health.
According to Dr. Soto, GPHC is currently in the admirable position of being the lone health facility in Guyana to have in place, not only a paediatric intensive care unit, but a Paediatric Critical Care Unit for that matter.
“There are definitely a lot of things that we should be proud of, and certainly this unit is an important point in the road we have been walking for three years,” said Dr. Soto, as he spoke of the potential of the unit to cater to critically ill patients.
“Any patient who requires special care after surgery, any surgery; not only cardiac, any critically-ill patient can be taken care of here with the appropriate treatment and physicians and nurses 24/7.”
Dr. Soto envisages the GPHC being able to do even more in the coming years. In fact, he disclosed that the next proposed step is to expand the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit, which he anticipates could be realised by the start of 2020.
“That will definitely be the culmination of this road regarding critical care,” said an optimistic Dr. Soto, as he lauded the commitment of local personnel over the years to what has been achieved thus far. “It has not been an easy road, but we have been able to achieve this, and it is a huge achievement,” he asserted.

In recognition of the outstanding achievement, GPHC’s Chief Executive Officer [CEO], Brigadier [Ret’d] George Lewis, exclaimed “Today is a great day. The dream many of us had has come to fruition today!”
CEO Lewis recalled that the creation of the facility was one that a number of doctors and medical professionals had recommended some years ago. He recalled that the recommendation for the facility was last year shared with the Parliamentary Sectoral Committee, which has oversight responsibility for health.
Coming out of that, Lewis recounted, was a directive from Senior Minister of Public Health, Ms. Volda Lawrence, for the creation of the facility. “It is my belief that this unit will ensure that we will be able to provide better care; more efficient and effective health care to the nation, particularly our children,” said CEO Lewis.
Minister Lawrence who was tasked with declaring the facility officially opened Friday said that its materialisation could not have been possible without the support of the Ministry of Finance. “I want to thank the Ministry of Finance for believing in us when we took our budget to the Ministry last year, and for allowing us to have that allocation to do these types of improvement,” said Minister Lawrence. She also commended the sustained support of Dr. Soto and his ICHF team.
“They have added some flavour to the vision and I want to thank you for that, and for what you have done on your past trips, and what you have done on this trip,” said the Public Health Minister to Dr. Soto.
Even as she acknowledged that, “Ministers can say as much as they want but if we don’t have the team to carry out those tasks it will not be done,” Minister Lawrence stressed the need for the facility to be continually outfitted with all necessary equipment and an ample number of specialised trained personnel to sustain its efficacy.
She added, “I want us to take care of this unit, there are some very, very expensive equipment in this unit and I ask that we take care of them and keep the unit clean and tidy, and we ensure that the service offered is one where people come in and feel very comfortable.”
Following the commissioning ceremony, Minister Lawrence and other officials were taken on a tour of the facility. During the tour, the Minister interacted with several grateful parents of the some of the children who recently benefited from paediatric cardiac procedures.

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