Latest update April 24th, 2024 12:59 AM
Jan 21, 2012 Editorial
Sometime last year, the then president Bharrat Jagdeo boasted that Guyana would be receiving some 300 more doctors to enhance the local medical system. Up until that announcement about 100 doctors had been trained in Cuba and had come home to take up appointments across the country.
When questioned, he proudly proclaimed that the health centres, the various clinics and above all, the regional hospitals would have their quota of doctors. Above all, the major referral hospitals would be adequately staffed. Indeed, the nation needed not wait until the 300 came home from Cuba this year. There were more doctors for better service at the Georgetown Public Hospital.
Judging from the improvements at the Georgetown Public Hospital—the new Maternity Unit, the new In Patient Facility, and of course all the other new sections, one would expect that the influx of doctors was being recognized. One expected that the treatment at the Accident and Emergency Unit would have been vastly improved.
It is true that over the years, people would rush to the Accident and Emergency Unit even if their case was not a matter of emergency. People simply saw a visit to that section of the hospital as a sure means of seeing a doctor. Try as they might, the administrators of the hospital could not get people to recognize that there were outpatient departments that could be equally effective once the case was not an emergency.
But the hospital has been coping. Real emergencies have been given priority and the people in the waiting room have not complained. That is why when news came that a woman in a dire physical condition was rushed to the Accident and Emergency and could not be attended to by a doctor until some ten hours had elapsed there were raised eyebrows.
Obviously there is no influx of doctors, or there is poor supervision that the doctors simply do not linger around to work. And this woman, who is now dead, was not the only case of medical service delayed. Every day since that episode, people complain about having to wait for hours, sometimes leaving to seek the services of a private medical facility.
In the case of the woman who died, the reports were that she was taken to the hospital suffering from a paralysis. She had gone to a private doctor who gave her some medication. It turns out that the medication could have never induced the paralysis.
There was no doctor at the Accident and Emergency Unit to treat this emergency. Calls to the doctor on call went unanswered. The result was that the woman was not treated until about ten hours after she was admitted. She remained in the Accident and Emergency Unit for that long before an attempt was made to diagnose her.
She died because she was intubated until it was almost too late. She was suffering from low potassium and such a diagnosis could have been made by a second year medical student. One of the first tests doctors do in cases of sudden paralysis is to test for potassium levels.
Something must be wrong, seriously wrong, at the nation’s leading referral hospital. One would have expected a large of number of doctors at the facility, given the numbers returning from Cuba and other countries.
Medical services may be free in Guyana but they do not have to be substandard. They are free in Cuba, too, but the doctors are professional. They recognize that any of the patients could be an unknown relative. Their Guyanese counterparts, however, seem to throw their profession through the window. They leave the patients to languish and there is no known reason for this behavior.
We do not believe that these doctors are overwhelmed because that is the nature of medicine. Helping people is their motto. It could be that there are never doctors at the Accident and Emergency Unit but this should not be the case. More doctors are in the service than at any time in recent memory.
There must be an investigation into the operation of the Accident and Emergency Unit. One is promised following the death of the woman. It must be thorough. People cannot be made to sit indefinitely in such a Unit. Waiting for more than an hour is not in the interest of the health services of Guyana.
LISTEN HOW JAGDEO WILL MAKE ALL GUYANESE RICH!!!
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