President Ali spotlights several initiatives to take healthcare to the next level

Noting that there have been “monumental changes” in the delivery of healthcare, President Dr. Irfaan Ali engaged medical personnel across the country on Friday to take healthcare to the next level.

At the engagement, which was held at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre (ACCC), the Head of State mentioned the regional hospitals under construction that would offer different levels of service.

“[These] require a greater degree of management at the regional level, a greater skillset [….], and these investments and the type of equipment and modernisation that is coming with these investments should drastically reduce the referrals at the Georgetown Hospital,” Dr. Ali posited.

The President explained that there will be state-of-the-art hospitals at the regional level, while there will be just below regional standards in the subregional areas.

As for the shortage of human resources capacity in the sector, the Guyanese noted that there will be a clear, planned, structured, and targeted solution to meet future requirements.

“We want more trainers of trainers, key assets to train in healthcare management. The Children and Maternal Hospital, I want it to be managed by the local capacity as far as possible. We have to identify what are the gaps, knowing the level of service that will come with that facility. I want us to take a few key persons from the system and attach them under the ITEC programme in India and attach them in China to state-of-the-art facilities so they can have an opportunity to spend a few weeks working in a similar environment so that transfer is smoother in what you are doing.”

The Head of State mentioned several initiatives underway, including the National Child and Youth Healthcare System, which targets 1224 Nursery One and Two children across the country with comprehensive screening.

“We want to build a healthcare system that allows us to track the health of our children from birth to throughout the lifecycle. We never had baseline data, we are now developing baseline data. So, we have this screening taking place.”

There is a National Primary Care System with 400 physicians in training, and a national campaign will soon be launched on a Comprehensive Adult Primary Care programme.