Gov’t facilitated training for 2,600 local doctors in Cuba
Written by Gina Webmasters, Published in News, Georgetown, GINA, January 9, 2015, Source - GINA
Public Service Minister Dr Jennifer Westford being greeted by Guyanese students returning after completing training in Cuba
The Public Service Ministry has a mandate of ensuring competent management of key public institutions, development of the human capital, and providing for ready and uninterrupted support to the Government of the day, while ensuring a peaceful industrial climate.
According to the Subject Minister, Dr. Jennifer Westford, speaking on the programme ‘Political Scope’ on the National Communications Network (NCN) on Thursday, Government continues to provide the necessary funds to maintain the trend of improving the country’s human resources.
Since 1992, the People’s Progressive Party Civic (PPP/C) had embarked on revitalising the training of professional staff, thereby improving and increasing the number of persons trained in the various entities, with specific emphasis on the health sector.
“We targeted mostly the health sector, which we all know was run down … there were no professionals. I can recall we could have counted the number of doctors at the Georgetown Hospital with my two hands …. now there are so many, we can’t even start counting them. So we embarked on forming professionals in the health sector, with the aim of improving service delivery to the citizens, and we have been successful thus far,” Minister Westford noted.
Doctors
To date, Government has facilitated training for 2, 600 medical doctors, 348 of whom are currently in training; 140 of whom were sent off during 2014/2015.
In 2013, over 300 trained Guyanese returned from Cuba, more than 100 of whom are doctors.
Minister Westford added that outside of the health professionals, whom Government targeted principally, the agriculture sector was also earmarked, a sector geared at putting Guyana on the map.
“Guyana was deemed the ‘bread basket’ for the Caribbean and we are aiming to do that again, and we can only do that if we have the professionals, who are there to offer that service to the farmers, because doing things scientifically will increase our agriculture yield and we are very successful so far in that area (too),” the Minister highlighted.
A batch of Cuban trained Guyanese doctors with President Donald Ramotar and Health Minister Dr Bheri Ramsaran and Cuban officials after their graduation ceremony
She explained that the goals Government set have not been met as yet, because this is a continuous process and as service delivery improves, the human capital will want more.
The Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC) is now equipped to facilitate cardiac surgery and soon will make possible neurological surgery; in fact recently, neurologist, Dr. Amarnauth Dukhi, who hails from Region Six, returned to Guyana and is about to perform his first surgery.
“So far Government has been living-up to that expectation and we intend to continue to try and provide the services they, the people, are asking for and we can only do so if we have the environment, create the environment, have the staff and the institutions …questions were asked about why Government is training certain professionals. (Well) for a country to provide a service, it must have the professionals to do so. We can’t wait until we have the institution and you know that we have intentions of building the Specialty Hospital…so we are training because it takes about seven or eight years for a neurologist to be trained,” Minister Westford reiterated.
Former Presidents of Guyana and Cuba, Bharrat Jagdeo and Fidel Castro respectively, years ago, inked the Government of Guyana/Cuba Scholarship Programme under which 500 students would be trained in Cuba in the disciplines of medicine, mechanical engineering, computer engineering, electrical engineering, culture, sport, agriculture, and architecture among others. At that time, Guyana was experiencing a shortage of doctors. Prior to this, a normal quota of 25 were sent for training.
There is some perception that the scholarship programme has somewhat dwindled. Minister Westford explained that Government sat and determined the number of doctors needed to man the health care facilities; hence an agreement was established in 2006, expanding the programme of cooperation between Guyana and Cuba in the medical field.
“That is a project that happened over a three-year period and we have continued with the normal scheme of things, sending persons out. However, if we get back to a point where we might need that influx of trained professionals, to get the sector up and running, we will embark on similar projects,” the minister further noted.
