Beg and borrow government

Jul 10, 2022 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

Kaieteur News – It is an indictment against and not an endorsement of the Ministry of Health that Guyana signed a pact with one of the largest health care providers in the United States. It is even more disheartening that this pact is likely to be substantially funded by an oil company.

The signing of that agreement between Guyana and Mount Sinai Healthcare was no red-letter moment. It raises a massive red flag about the direction in which the local healthcare system is headed.

Guyana, an oil-producing state, continues to beg and borrow. Instead of seeking to build a health system which caters for poor people, it is pursuing initiatives which will give to the private sector exclusive rights to specialised health care such as oncology and cardiology treatment.

It is an utter disgrace that the Irfaan Ali administration is moving in this direction. It is all the more discreditable that the ones who are likely to benefit from government spending in this regard are private health providers.

Make no mistake about the pact entered into between Mount Sinai Healthcare and Guyana. The more than six billion Guyana dollars which is going to be provided is not going to be sufficient to build any oncology and cardiology hospitals, much less provide the costly treatment and care which such hospitals provide.

It will take much more than US$30M for state-of-the-art cardiology and oncology equipment for heart and cancer hospitals. That US$30M may not be even sufficient to pay the fees of those high-priced specialists who are likely to be recruited from overseas to be part of this initiative. Most of the 6 billion Guyana dollars are going to end up in the hands of consultants who will be coming to advise and establish systems and to pay for doctors who will be on exchange at the Georgetown Hospital.

The government will brag that the agreement, which was signed last Friday, will not cost it a cent. The bulk of the funding is expected to be provided by Hess, one of the major players in our oil sector. Well, if that oil company has those resources to provide as part of its corporate social responsibility, it can damn well provide 10 times more by increasing the original and pitiful signing bonus which it along with Exxon and CNOOC paid to the government.

Fine speeches were made by those present at Friday’s signing ceremony. But how much will those nice-sounding words reduce the cost of heart and cancer treatment?

In this country, if you do not have money, any such care which you receive is likely to be second class. And with this new agreement, even though it is likely that the quality of treatment will improve, there is no guarantee that it will be free to those needing it the most.

I have witnessed tragic instances of persons who have had to take discharge from local private hospitals because they simply could not afford the cost. In one instance a man suffered a heart attack and had to be rushed to a private hospital. He was placed in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). After two days, the family could not afford the tab anymore. They were forced to take a discharge.

In another case, the man’s family could not have afforded the cost of the ICU but when they were told the cost of an angiogram and the possible stents which may have had to be inserted into the man’s vessels, they also had to take a discharge.

A man appeared on a Tik Tok video this past week. He related how he called an ambulance for someone who was lying on the streets and who was in a poor shape and, in his estimation, needed medical attention. He said that he was told that no ambulance was available. But he said that an ambulance could have been found the following day to remove the remains of the man who died.

This is the tragedy of local healthcare in Guyana. The cost of Friday’s signing ceremony could have saved a life. The fat monthly salaries and allowances which are paid to unneeded advisors within the health system can save lives and help to improve the quality of healthcare at public hospitals.

The government should provide a detailed breakdown to the public showing how it proposes to spend the 6 billion dollars. They should show the public how they intend to use these funds which could have been better spent to make cardiology and oncology services more affordable and accessible to the average man.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

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