Dr. Dukhi optimistic about advancing neurosurgery in public health sector

Dec 10, 2019 News

Guyana’s public health sector has prided itself over the years for offering free health care to all and sundry and this is expected to remain a staple for years to come.

Local Neurosurgeon, Dr. Amarnauth Dukhi

Although the services offered are of a high quality, some commentators are convinced that even more could be made available if some aspects of the health care offered by the public were financed rather than offered entirely free of charge.
Among those embracing this theory is Guyanese neurosurgeon, Dr. Amarnauth Dukhi, who heads the Neurosurgery Department at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation [GPHC]. He also practises at a number of private hospitals.
He has an appreciation for the high costs attached to the delivery of quality health care. This he amplified during an interview with this publication.
“In the public health sector, it is very difficult to finance free public health care for all Guyanese; it is extremely difficult…Very few countries, let’s say in the Caribbean for example, can do that; they have a national health insurance plan.”
If some aspects of health care are financed, Dr. Dukhi theorised that that could go towards the sector to help improve the quality of services offered, the human resource capacity, among other areas.
“Guyana is fortunate…The Ministry of Public Health supports everything, it pays for everything,” said Dr. Dukhi. He added, though, that once this remains the state of affairs, it will be a difficult task to achieve an even higher level of health care for those accessing the free services offered.
“As long as the health sector has to subsidise everything, we will be the way we are. We need some people taking up the slack…a national health plan to deal with issues [like this] because everyone looks for quality health care and quality health care comes at a high cost,” said Dr. Dukhi.
His comments in this regard were nestled around his hope to see measures put in place to advance neurosurgery within the public health setting.
“To get the government to build capacity for neurosurgery, I don’t know how it will be done because that will entail having a neurosurgery ward, a neurosurgery high dependency unit, a neurosurgery intensive care unit, neuro-surgically trained nurses, operating technicians and a neurosurgical suit,” Dr. Dukhi shared.
Although funding will no doubt be a major challenge to advance neurosurgery in Guyana, Dr. Dukhi is nevertheless pushing for this to become a reality. “I would like to leave a legacy before I retire,” said Dr. Dukhi.
He revealed plans in the making to train other neurosurgeons with the hope of ensuring that the public health system is never left void of such professionals.
His hope is that “it will never again be without an in-house physician who will be able to offer adequate neurological care to our people.”
He is currently in the process of creating a local postgraduate programme to train young physicians to become neurosurgeons.
This venture, he said, is being undertaken in collaboration with the University of the West Indies’ Mona Campus in Jamaica and the McMaster University in Canada.
But this is no easy task as Dr. Dukhi confided, “It is a lot of work to put together a syllabus and put everything together but in my few minutes of free time during the day, I sit and work on it in trying to get the accreditation and so on.”
He added, “Something that must come simultaneously with that is our improvement in our resources at the centres that we are going to offer postgraduate courses because if McMaster or Mona Campus is to come to GPHC and see that we have not developed our infrastructure enough to offer a programme; they will not accredit us. They will not give their accreditation.”
Although confident that such an endeavour can materialise, Dr. Dukhi admitted that it will be a long process. “Some people…don’t understand that it is something that does not happen overnight and the first thing that these accrediting universities need to know is that you have an accredited neurosurgeon recognised on site…
They have accepted me as that key person and they are willing now to support it.”
However, in order for this to be introduced, the local neurosurgeon reiterated the fact that “if the programme is to run in our public health sector, we are going to have to build capacity.”

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