UK’s ‘SMART’ Hospitals initiative in Guyana completed

Jul 22, 2023 News

Kaieteur News – The United Kingdom US$4.2M ‘Smart Hospital Initiative’, which saw five health facilities across the country being retrofitted, has been completed.

British High Commissioner to Guyana, Her Excellency Jane Miller held a reception to celebrate the completion of the new and improved Smart facilities at her Bel Air Gardens residence on Tuesday.

In her address to attendees, the British High Commissioner said that the initiative was aimed not only to retrofit the identified facilities but to develop a blueprint that would enable facilities to be retrofitted or facilities to be built with better standard in mind.

The Diamond Diagnostic Centre which was retrofitted for approximately $222 million.

The Smart Health Care Facilities in the Caribbean Project saw Guyana collaborating with the United Kingdom (UK) to retrofit five selected hospitals with environmentally-friendly systems, and heightened resistance to natural disasters. The hospitals also utilised colour therapy to lift the spirits of patients, and induce a sense of wellness and calm.

The Mabaruma Regional Hospital that was upgraded to the tune of $150 million.

The five hospitals that benefitted are Paramakatoi, Leonora, Diamond, Mabaruma and Lethem.

“We know that the Caribbean is to disasters and many different type of disasters; earthquakes, hurricanes, volcanoes, floods, fires and many, many hazards that make the Caribbean vulnerable and when a health facility gets damaged it is disastrous to communities. So about seven years ago we started this initiative where we said ‘how do we make sure that health facilities can come more resilient to whatever that hazard might be’ and this started an assessment of facilities across the Caribbean including Guyana and five facilities were chosen in Guyana to be retrofitted,” High Commissioner Miller said.

Minister of Health, Dr. Frank Anthony

She continued: “But it was never the intention that the end of retrofitting is the end of the project. The whole idea of the project was to develop a blueprint to develop a tool kit that will enable facilities to be retrofitted or facilities to be built with better standard in mind. And the key thing we were looking out for was firstly being resilient to those disasters, but also it is that making sure that they have green standard.”

According to her, throughout Guyana and the Caribbean each individual facility was assessed and then a retrofitting was done to make sure the plans were met.

The British High Commissioner explained too that the initiative is now a toolkit which has not only been adapted by the Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO) but also by the World Health Organization (WHO) but globally.

“It was first presented at COP26 as a mechanism for improving health infrastructure throughout the world, we believe it is going to be presented at COP28 coming up,” she noted.

British High Commissioner to Guyana, Jane Miller.

Expressing gratitude to the contractors and stakeholders who have been part of the initiative, the Commissioner expressed that it was Guyana and other countries in the Caribbean who are the trailblazers for this initiative.

Meanwhile, Minister of Health, Dr. Frank Anthony expressed gratitude for the work done at the five hospitals.

“This project was able to do for us here in Guyana was to assess 71 of our health facilities and we have had a good methodology that allows us to check everything and having done the assessment then we selected five but we are now able to use the information that we have, so that when we do our construction, we will be able to improve these facilities so that they can become more user friendly and be able to meet the goals of being resilient,” he mentioned.

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Dr. Frank Anthony, expressed, Guyana, improved, Minister of Health

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