‘Develop GPHC instead of investing in

specialty hospital’- Dr Cummings

Guyana’s healthcare system is in need of rescue and recovery with the implementation of initiatives that will reflect a 20/20 vision of healthcare delivery, says Dr. Karen Cummings, Parliamentarian for A Partnership for National Unity (APNU). She believes that Government should develop the already existing tertiary level healthcare institution, Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC), instead of pursuing the construction of the specialty hospital.

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During her 2014 National Budget presentation to the National Assembly on Thursday evening, Dr. Cummings highlighted that Guyana boasts five levels of healthcare services: health posts, health centres, district hospitals, regional hospitals, and tertiary hospitals. She noted that developing GPHC, a referral and teaching hospital, would be the wise thing to do since it will result in less cost to taxpayers. “The specialist programmes done at GPHC in collaboration with the University of Guyana, the Universities of Vander Belt and Ohio in the USA and the Columbia University in Canada, has begun to train specialists in the areas of Orthopedics, General Surgery, Internal Medicine, Pediatrics and in Obstetrics and Gynecology to name a few, should be sustained,” Dr. Cummings added. She recommended that the remuneration package of such doctors should be attractive. In addition, the doctors should be encouraged and deployed to work in the three counties where they would be able to manage the patients efficiently and monitor them accurately. According to the Parliamentarian, the 2014 Budget does not provide for improvements in the socioeconomic status of healthcare providers, even though monetary motivation remains the preferred manner of encouragement. According to Dr. Cummings, during the budget debates mention was made of extending the wards of the Obstetrics and Gynecology departments of the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation, but no methods of recruiting more nurses to match this expansion were provided. Sourcing a Kaieteur News article dated March 8, 2014, she said that over $364M of taxpayers’ money was spent on nursing education annually but the graduates are lost to migration to foreign countries. “To establish the point of shortages of trained nurses, Mr. Speaker, it must be emphasized, that out of the 120 eligible nurses from 255 who had enrolled for the three-year nursing course, less than 50 percent proved eligible to write the finals. And, out of the 50 percent who were qualified to write the final exams, less than 15 percent passed; and in one county less than one percent of the nursing student passed the said examination,” she said. This poor performance was blamed on the large student to tutor ratio, overcrowding in classrooms, insufficient training materials and inadequate infrastructure, Dr. Cummings enlightened. She pointed out that the post graduate nurses and medex suffered similar fate. Of the 29 post graduate nurses who wrote exams only five passed; and of the 90 medex who wrote exams, only one passed. “This scenario leaves this noble House in uncertainty regarding the requirement of adequate nursing staff that will be available to aid the provision of safe motherhood, to attend to high risk mothers and babies who are being delivered,” Dr. Cummings said. She recommended that the technical capabilities of healthcare workers be strengthened at all levels through training and retraining with major emphasis being placed on strengthening supervisory skills. According to Dr. Cummings, the construction and outfitting of the proposed maternity waiting homes in Lethem and Bartica are good gestures. These facilities should be more decentralized with trained staff to respond to the growing needs in this area of healthcare service. In addition, the nine-bed Dr. CC Nicholson Hospital at Nabaclis on the East Coast Demerara should be staffed with more midwives to allow for 24-hr service. This recommendation was applauded by the Opposition side of the House.