New strategic leadership in the health sector is critical

By Sasenarine Singh

Many of us in this struggle to bring good governance to Guyana have seen first-hand that the partisan debates in Georgetown can serve as a distraction to uniting the forces around common-sense actions that are vitally needed for the people.  Two of the interconnected hazards we face today include an underperforming economy and the continuing problem of not securing value-for-money.

Sasenarine Singh

Let us look at the health sector. Today we have the infant mortality rate stagnant at 29 (per 1,000) for over a decade. We have the maternal mortality rate rising from 220 (per 100,000) in 2002 to 280 in 2010.  Bottom line, more mothers are dying at child birth in Guyana since 2002.  The nurses/patient ratio dropped from 10.5 (per 10,000) in 2002 to 5.3 in 2012; meaning fewer nurses per patient since 2002. All of these statistics were sourced from the World Health Organization and International Monetary Fund; they are no gimmick but the hard truth. In spite of spending significantly more cash on the health sector over the last decade, the nation continues to not get the results for which hard dollars were paid. To illustrate this point; it is a fact that the PPP Government increased its expenditure on the health sector from 5.8 percent of the National Budget in 2000 to 8.9 percent in 2013. To compound this waste, the 2013 budget was the biggest ever in the nation’s history.  This validates that the PPP is practicing voodoo economics, but we know why they have reverted to voodoo. The nation spent G$17 billion in 2012 on the health sector, but the results are just not there to justify where this money is going.  Today we have a demotivated cadre of nurses who stood in the rain only months ago to protest against another 5 percent wages increase. Where are we going as a nation? Our nation’s health investment strategy is hardly a strategy at all.  We continue to not invest enough in areas that can matters such as in the human capital in the healthcare sector; the people. The Alliance For Change (AFC) would like to offer an alternative focus and thus puts forward a proposal that allows for the revamping of the education system for training our health professionals and to provide tailored incentives such as interest rebates for nurses who are paying a mortgage for five years; free house lots for nurses who are in the public service for greater than five years and a five-year investment fund geared to supporting families with nurses who are parents to migrate from rented accommodation into their own homes. After all, it was the AFC that committed to increasing the wages of nurses and other public servants by 20 percent if it had won power in 2011. Unfortunately, in our latest financial analysis of the 2013 National Budget, that opportunity is now lost as the economy continue to under-perform; 5 percent economic growth is just not good enough to lift the nation out of poverty.  The nation can only afford approximately 10 percent wages increase today, but even that the PPP Government is prepared to cheat the nurses on. This article clearly exemplifies that the PPP Government has its priorities in the health sector all wrong; they continue to not focus enough on the productivity of the human capital and to transfer billions into procurement contracts that feed the greedy habits of those closest to them. What must a responsible majority opposition do if not confront this naked administrative corruption at every opportunity and at every forum? Such repression demands that the political struggle has to be taken to a different level.  More of the same clearly has not worked and cannot work in the future; the fight has to be taken to the PPP, but within the confines of the law. That is why the AFC plans to intensify its plan to inform the people of their rights to demand better value for money from the PPP and to ramp up our advocacy on behalf of the people. But on top of that, the AFC will be putting forward more policy measures to demand better governance of the nation. The AFC calls on the PPP Government to introduce a Patients’ Bill of Rights Law to protect patients as we outlined in our Action Plan.  Any time a hospital is found to have failed the family of a patient, especially those mothers who continue to die at childbirth, the State must be held accountable, financially, to make it right for the surviving family members, if negligence is proven. Another measure we will be pushing is more forensic audits of the health system, especially the operations at the Georgetown Hospital, conducted by the Audit Office.  Those findings must be the foundation to facilitate public discussion to influence public policy. We cannot be spending over G$17 billion and people have to be waiting for hours on the “death benches” or so many young mothers continue to die in the delivery room.  There must be a better way. Do not get us wrong, the AFC remains committed to joining with any force that can and will do something tangible to address the pressing crisis in the health sector and to bring an end to this PPP squander-mania.  But if it requires us continuing our overt act of taking the fight to the PPP to correct this historical injustice against the people, so that thousands can secure better health service, then this is not a struggle that we can shy away from; it is our moral imperative.