Mahdia District Hospital to rehabilitate at an estimated cost $13.5M

Mar 07, 2022 News

Kaieteur News – With $2.5 billion approved in Budget 2022 for Region Eight, its Regional Administration is looking to spend some $13 million out of that sum for the rehabilitation of the Mahdia District Hospital.

The Mahdia District Hospital

This is according to an invitation for bids issued by the Regional Democratic Council (RDC) of Region Eight, seeking contractors to rehabilitate the health facility at an estimated cost of $13,584,000.
Kaieteur News understands that the money that was approved for Region Eight, the sum of $269 million was allotted towards public works for the region, the sum of $1.4 billion was allocated for education development, $623 million for health services, and some $30 million was allocated for its agriculture sector.
The Mahdia District Hospital which first operated as a health centre in the 1970s, and turned into a district hospital in the 2000s, now acts only as the main referral health institution for the region.
With rehabilitation works slated for the institution, the goal really is to now move it from a level three facility to a level four which means it would be upgraded to a regional hospital. This is according to the Regional Health Officer, Dr. Ravindra Dudhnauth who spoke briefly with Kaieteur News on Saturday.
“We want to upgrade the hospital to a level four hospital which is going to move it to a regional hospital,” he said.
In order to upgrade the facility to a regional hospital he highlighted that it would need to provide services such as surgeries and offer different kind of healthcare services. “So the rehabilitation process is where the hospital is going to have one theatre room, an observation room and a recovery room,” Dr. Dudhnauth explained.
According to him, never before did the Mahdia hospital provide these services to its patients. “Region Eight never had any theatre services. All our patients that would require operating theatre surgeries whether it has been general surgeries, gynaecology surgery or orthopedics or any type of surgery we would have to refer those patients to the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC),” he pointed out. With these kinds of services slated to be offered in the region, it would prevent persons from travelling some seven hours by land to reach the GPHC or having be taken there by a plane.
Some other health services projects that contractors are invited to undertake in that region are the construction of a health post and living quarters in Sand Hill Village; this is estimated at $13,900,000. The construction of a health post and living quarters in Waipa Village, this is estimated at $12,000,000, the extension of Kaibarupai Health post which is estimated to cost $8,000,000, extension of the Mailwak Health post which is estimated at $8,000,000 also and the instillation of a central oxygen and medical air system at the Mahdia District Hospital which is pegged at $8,000,000. The public notice states that these projects will be opened on March 15 at the Regional Administration Office located in Mahdia.