Latest update April 4th, 2025 12:14 AM
Multi-Purpose Technician, Ginnel Garraway
Our Frontline worker of the Week is…
“I love my profession and being able to provide health care to patients on a daily basis motivates me to get up every day and keep going.”
Kaieteur News – Although it took some stoking from her mother, Ginnel Garraway was eventually able to realise that she was destined to make her mark in the health sector. This of course was after she’d caressed the idea of being a flight attendant for some time. But according to Garraway, “my mom had other plans…being a part of the health system, she encouraged me to take that path.”
Her mother, Waveney Thomside, was a Senior Health Education Officer at the Ministry of Health Annex for several years before she migrated to the United States.
Engrossed in her laboratory work
A photo opportunity with her colleagues
Multi-Purpose Technician, Ginnel Garraway
While Garraway opted for a different aspect of health care – being a Multi-Purpose Technician – she, over the years, was able to hone the skills she acquired to the point of being an outstanding professional.
Reflecting on her exposure to the Multi-Purpose Technician programme which was facilitated by the Ministry of Health, Garraway said, “I was trained as a Lab, Pharmacy and X-ray Technician but I have only worked in the laboratory since my training.” She went on to explain that “as a lab technician for the past 11 years at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation, it is my duty to provide accurate and precise results in the health care facility to every patient.”
But before that, as a fledgling Multi-Purpose Technician, she was attached to the National Blood Transfusion Services, the national blood bank. Her stay there would span a period of seven years.
Garraway, who was ushered into the world on January 30, 1982, recalled that she was raised exclusively by her mother since her father, Joseph Garraway, passed away three months after her birth. “I never got to know him and so it was just my mother who raised me and got me to where I am today,” said a contented Garraway.
As a child, she attended the Sacred Heart Primary and the North Georgetown Secondary schools, and during those days, she recalled developing a passion for cricket. Rivalling her love for cricket back then, was her desire to become a flight attendant.
But like most mothers, Garraway’s mother saw wisdom in guiding her daughter to a more impacting profession, one in which she is now able to make history alongside droves of other frontline health workers, who are daily taking on the fierce fight against COVID-19.
With her lovely daughter, Brienelle Hopkinson
Since the onset of COVID-19 here, Garraway in her lab technician capacity has been tasked with processing all samples from patients who are hospitalised with a view of getting the requisite results to the doctors in a timely manner. Being in the heat of the COVID-19 battle, has taught her quite a few lessons. Among them, she shared, is that “life is not to be taken for granted.”
With more than 24,000 confirmed cases locally, of which over 600 have died, being in the business of health care these days is an especially risky affair.
But even with this awareness, Garraway has no regrets that she chose a career in the health care system. She, with pride, intimated, “I love my profession and being able to provide health care to patients on a daily basis motivates me to get up every day and keep going.” This is in spite of the fact that she has seen the impact of COVID-19 much too close for her liking. “I have had family members who were infected including two of my sisters, one of my nephews and also workmates.”
Grateful that she was spared being infected, Garraway today is proud to be among the local health workers who opted to be fully vaccinated when the COVID-19 vaccine became available.
Convinced that the vaccine works, her advice to those reluctant to be vaccinated is simply “choose life.”
In choosing life herself, Garraway, who is mother to a lovely daughter, Brienelle Hopkinson, bolsters her protection by taking the necessary precautions such as hand washing, always wearing a mask, social distancing and constantly sanitising. This is particularly important to her since, according to her, “I try to spend as much quality time with my daughter because she is preparing to write the CXC exams next year.”
In addition to finding time for her daughter, Garraway, a cricket enthusiast, admitted that she can be found glued to the television whenever a game of cricket is on.
Similar Articles
THE BLUNT OF THE DAY
Sports
Features/Columnists
A coalition of shared disgrace
Peeping Tom… Kaieteur News- The APNU and the AFC deserve each other. They deserve to be shackled together in a coalition... more
The U.S. “Joining” the Commonwealth: an unreasonable expectation
By Sir Ronald Sanders Kaieteur News- Recent media stories have suggested that King Charles III could “invite” the United... more
Weekend Cartoon
