BETTER MEDICAL SERVICES ARE NEEDED!

After almost 50 years of independence, it is very disappointing that the hospitals in Guyana continue to provide relatively poor services to the people. Guyana has a developing health care system. It is now moving to build a Specialty Hospital that could promote medical tourism.
The hospital would afford foreigners the chance to get cheap surgical interventions. That was the plan from the inception.
Will the government pay super salaries to foreign doctors, nurses and medical technicians to work at the Specialty Hospital? That may be the best thing since the skills on offer do not come cheap. Will the masses have access to it or is it being built to accommodate the rich only? Only if they seek top of the line medical surgery.
The Minister of Health has a great deal of work ahead of him to maintain the people’s confidence in the public hospitals. There is no excuse for the high number of maternal and infant mortality at the public hospitals. While there are cases of the successes and kindness from some medical personnel at the public hospitals; there are also callousness, carelessness and major failures that have resulted in the loss of lives.
The frequent shortages of drugs coupled with poor services from doctors and nurses and the length of time it takes a patient to be treated are common practices at the public hospitals. There are still the occasional shortages of drugs to treat patients. When in opposition, the Minister of Health was very critical of the government for the shortages of drugs. Today, the same thing is happening. Some say that it is a carryover from the previous administration.
Maternal and infant mortality and deaths from simple illness are frequent at the public hospitals. Indeed, all Guyanese deserve answers as to why maternal and infant mortality are still taking place in this modern era. It was expected that the creation of the Regional Health Clinics would solve some of the problems at the public hospitals. Some of the clinics are.
Most are under staffed and could hardly provide proper first aid service to patients and they do not have the basic bio-medical equipment to diagnose ailments. But some of them are efficient.
It cannot be business as usual for the Minister of Health. He has to think outside the box and appoint a Director of Women’s Health with a special focus on maternal and infant mortality.
Countless patients, who are in need of life-saving care, die waiting helplessly on the system to save them. Life is too precious for the Minister to make money an issue over life. With so much money being budgeted annually for healthcare, Guyana (250) still has a higher rate of maternal mortality, second to Haiti (380) than its CARICOM partners: Grenada (24), St Lucia (35), the Bahamas (47), St Vincent and the Grenadines (48), and Barbados (51). India with 50,000 is the highest in world, followed by Nigeria (40,000). China has 5,900 and the US has 28.
With reference to infant mortality, Guyana’s 32 deaths per 1,000 live births is second to Haiti (54) and both have a higher rate than Antigua/Barbuda (6), Bahamas (10), Barbados (11), Grenada (11), St Lucia (13), Belize (14), Jamaica (14), St Vincent/Grenadines (17) and Trinidad and Tobago (18).
Guyana’s health care, especially the public hospitals, needs a further upgrade to prevent deaths in future. That is why the focus is on training the practitioners. It is unethical for patients to have surgeries at the public hospitals under unsafe conditions at the hands of poorly trained individuals.
Better medical services are on the cards and Guyana can only be better for it.