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Aug 19, 2009 News
Although the public health sector has been given a significant boost with the addition of 65 new doctors, Government will now be confronted with the challenge to direct additional funds to sustain the sector.
According to Health Minister, Dr Leslie Ramsammy, the $12B which was allocated in the budget for the health sector this year is suddenly not going to be enough. “I don’t know whether our government will have those resources to meet those needs but every year since 1992 the health sector has had an increase in its budget and I have no doubt that its budget in 2010 will be larger,” Dr Ramsammy related.
But although added financial support is guaranteed, the Minister cited the procurement of medicines and supplies as one area in which money will not be enough.
Prior to the influx of trained doctors from Cuba, the utilisation of medicines and supplies by the doctors in the system were limited, added to the few used by medexes. However, the public health sector will now see more doctors prescribing a variety of medicines in the quest to make health care more accessible to all citizens, thus presenting the financial challenge.
“If we take the budget for medicine and supplies and you go back to 2000 we had just about $500M for medicine and supplies in the health sector. But now it has passed $3B. In 1992 the total amount that was available for medicine and supply such as gloves and syringes in Guyana was $150M and now it is over $3B…. I am saying that with all these doctors, that would not be enough…” the Minister asserted.
But according to him, Government is indeed aware of the looming challenge and will deliver on its promise to the populace. “When we committed to train all these people we also committed to the provision of all these things,” said the Minister.
And even as the 65 new doctors settle in, the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC) is also churning out more post-graduate surgeons with support from the Government of Canada.
It was just last year that the first batch of doctors to undertake the Post Graduate Diploma in General Surgery in Guyana graduated at the University of Guyana’s 42nd convocation at the Turkeyen Campus.
The batch, which consisted of five doctors, namely Shawn Legall, Carlos Martin, Shilindra Rajcumar, Navindranauth Rambaran and Allan Tinnie, were all in attendance to receive honorary recognition and to recite the Hippocratic oath at the graduation ceremony.
The five were for 18 months engaged in the programme, which is being offered by the University of Guyana. Courses were however carried out primarily at the GPHC with the assistance of Canadian surgeons who worked closely throughout the programme with the doctors while in training.
Chief Executive Officer of the GPHC, Mr Michael Khan had said that the inclusion of the doctors as surgeons comes as part of an intensified capacity-building strategy of the Public Health Sector.
He had pointed out that with the posting of the surgeons to various regional hospitals there is the expectation that many cases will not be referred to the GPHC since they will be equipped with necessary skills to perform optimally.
However, according to Dr Ramsammy, the surgeons who were dispatched to the Regional Hospitals including West Demerara, Bartica and New Amsterdam, have been calling for more patients.
As a result, the Minister said that efforts would be made to identify certain cases in the elective surgery backlog at the GPHC, which will be directed to the surgeons to ensure that their skills are fully utilised as well.
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