Healthcare facilities or sickness black holes?

Aug 28, 2022 Editorial

Kaieteur News – Governments love to talk about infrastructure. Guyana’s politicians constantly delight in larding citizen with how much they care, how many billions they are spending, and how much Guyanese will enjoy a better quality of life, with improved healthcare always a prime objective. Then, we are brought back to reality, when the IDB delivers a damning report on our health facilities, and leaves Guyanese asking themselves what they are getting for their billions spent (“IDB finds that 94 percent of Guyana’s health facilities have no access to treated water” -KN August 23). Our caption was only one devastating aspect of the ugly healthcare story with which Guyanese live, and by somehow don’t get wretchedly sicker.

A snapshot of the IDB’s findings would help, and it is bad, thoroughly embarrassing. There were 330 health facilities assessed, with 20 percent lacking electricity, 60 percent of the building not receiving a continuous supply of water during operating hours, and 94 percent not receiving treated water. Incinerators and other waste disposal systems were unavailable at over half the health facilities examined, and 80 percent of those same healthcare centres do not have continuous availability of medicines, including antibiotics, among others. In sum, though only part of the 2022 IDB report on healthcare in Guyana, it is a horror story.

Clearly, Guyanese are led astray by the big numbers that politicians claim they are spending on healthcare, when this is the state of our healthcare facilities available to the sick and struggling. The question is where all the billions have gone, given that there is so little to show for what was spent. When medical staff are forced to treat our sick in partial darkness (limited electricity), in some uneven state of surrounding cleanliness (inconstant water supply), and in circumstances where medicines almost routinely prescribed may not be in stock, then citizens are getting ripped off for their tax dollars put into the healthcare system. For all the millions and billions spent, Guyanese should be getting more from health facilities in much better states of operation.

We have written so much about corruption and mismanagement in this country under different governments and leaders, that we risk getting sick ourselves, should we continue to speak and write about such things. But we have no choice, and must keep on beating the drum of chronic corruptions and political failures (likely crimes), if only to alert our fellow citizens, and to maintain the heat on leaders and ministers and their defenders. It is not only in healthcare that these acute ills fester, but in every other area of infrastructure development and spending, as we have exposed on a near continual basis.

Now, the IDB is lending Guyana another US$160M to improve our sorry, sickly, and shameful healthcare system. The big chiefs in the PPP/C Government can start celebrating Christmas from now, with what is the equivalent of G$32B from the IDB to have some more fun at the expense of Guyanese. It is a huge amount, this additional G$32B line of credit, and it could facilitate a world of good across our shabby healthcare system, but only if put to the cleanest use possible. For when there are so many billions to play with, there are plenty of opportunities for self-help, and self-enrichment by political operators, contractors, suppliers, workers, and others feasting at the taxpayers’ trough. The only ones who are left behind, who lose out on each occasion, are those sick Guyanese patients, who have no choice but to visit a public health facility to get some much-needed relief from whatever ailments they suffer.

We have attracted more than our share of hard feelings for bringing these savaging truths before the Guyanese public, which supporters of both the PPP/C and APNU+AFC Governments find offensive, and feel are better left unreported, even unjustified. But when a prestigious international institution like the IDB puts out a report like this one on healthcare facilities in Guyana, we recognise that our tireless and thankless work takes time, but it does bear fruit. Just to comment on the state of our healthcare facilities in Guyana makes us ill. Our politicians should hang their heads in shame at the stench that comes from them when something like this exists.