Guyana’s Public Health – A Human Resources Development Plan?

Oct 13, 2018 Letters

Dear Editor,
In his usual elegantly articulated column ‘Future Notes’ (SN October 3, 2018), Dr. Henry Jeffrey quoted the following by the current Minister of Public Health ‘speaking to a gathering of overseas Guyanese in the United States last week’, regarding the brain drain of nurses from Guyana and Caribbean countries.
The actual quote follows, “I said to them that this is not something to complain [about]. You got to fix it. If they want our people, let us train them and send them out so we could get forty Western Unions in our countries instead of ten, so that we can exchange human resources and get back the monies into our country. We have to find a way, we just can’t complain.”
Sensible persons on reading the foregoing, would have to restrain themselves from commenting appropriately. And these must include cabinet colleagues.
The latter must ask whether this vacuous human resources development plan was ever submitted for their consideration.
Next, the Board of the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation must wonder how come this intention was not leaked to them so that they can develop an appropriate training budget; that is, if they expect the Minister of Finance could be convinced that overseas remittances will more than compensate for the cost of investment in this migrant nursing scheme.
Then physicians and other medical specialists in the public health sector must wonder why, when right now they are not adequately supported by needed qualified nurses.
In vain effort to comfort patients and families, they have to pretend that the right competencies are available from the following skill levels:
Senior Technical – Health Visitor
Senior Medex
Nursing Tutor
Medex
Other Technical & Craft Skilled – Staff Nurse/Midwife
Staff Nurse
Semi-skilled Operatives & Unskilled – Nursing Assistant
Nurse Aide
Patient Care Assistant
It would be no surprise, if the last grouping substantially outnumbers the others. Just ask patients and their families.
Another interested party would obviously be the Guyana Nurses’ Association, who at last interaction with the Minister, was enthused by the hint of an expanded nursing training capacity. Little could they have imagined that it was intended to be an export facility.
They must now wonder about the inadequate resourcing at long established regional hospitals on the coastland, and the urgent need to upgrade the number and standard of health services in the hinterland; about the increasing demand for more effective health service for the flood of oil and gas immigrants that can reasonably be expected in the foreseeable future.
But alas, they all have learnt through social media that the perceived deficits at home will be addressed by a spontaneous and randomly conceived human resources export plan.
Yours faithfully
E.B. John

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