US Army, other medical missions to partner with Govt. for eye surgeries

Apr 07, 2019 News

Public Health Minister Volda Lawrence at the National Ophthalmology Hospital in Port Mourant.

300 eye surgeries conducted in first quarter at National Ophthalmology Hospital

A medical team from the United States Army is scheduled to visit Guyana soon to work with other international partners and the Ministry of Public Health to conduct cataract and other surgeries here.
The surgeries are expected to commence as early as May.
Ministry of Public Health’s Focal Point in Region 6, Alex Foster, made this disclosure during the re-commissioning of the National Ophthalmology Hospital in Port Mourant, East Berbice. “During the first week in next month the United States Embassy is collaborating with the Ministry of Public Health and by extension the National Ophthalmology Hospital and the US Army…and they will start cataract surgery at the National Ophthalmology Hospital.”
“Management is also in discussion with the Sai Baba team so that when the Americans leave the Sai Baba team will be here to continue… so from next month to the end of 2019, three teams will be here,” Foster noted.
‪No major surgeries have been performed at the Ophthalmology Hospital for some time. However, for the first quarter of 2019, some 300 minor eye surgeries were done at the facility as against 90 for the same period last year.
‪According to the Public Health Ministry’s Permanent Secretary, Colette Adams, the ministry has invested heavily in getting the facility functioning on a larger scale. She related that the ministry has reinvested in this facility.
“The ophthalmology centre had a lot of corrective work done; these works were not done now but maybe years before, so every time you fix one thing, something else goes wrong. The roof was one of those areas which we had to spend an extreme amount of money to fix because where the ACs were, there was damage to ceilings, and that is why the ophthalmology hospital was down for a period.”
The re-commissioning of the ophthalmology centre comes after the region’s health department sought to address issues which prevented major surgeries from being done.