Latest update April 17th, 2025 8:39 PM
Health Minister says more ultra sounds, ECG, X-ray machines to be procured this year
Kaieteur News – The Ministry of Health will be expanding its procurement of equipment for the health sector, subject Minister Dr. Frank Anthony announced while specifically pointing to ultra sound, X-ray and electrocardiogram (ECG) machines.
Minister of Health, Dr. Frank Anthony
The ministry was allocated $129.8B in the budget with $2.9B being allocated for the purchase of vital equipment for the sector.
During an airing of ‘Budget in Focus’, a television programmed that was aired on the National Communications Network (NCN) at the weekend, Minister Anthony outlined how his ministry intends to spent the $2.9B set aside for medical equipment.
He said that the country has 23 analog X-ray machines, and by mid-year digital X-ray machines will be installed and utilized in the health sector.
“When I say convert, we will remove those old machines, some of them have been there for more than 20 years in some cases and these are the machines where you have to take the x-ray that you take the film, then you have to go and wash it, so we don’t want that,” he elaborated.
According to the minister these “old machines” can be very problematic in terms of radiation and then the imagines are not portable, and so money has been put aside to have the machines replaced with digital ones.
Kaieteur News understands that the government has already started the procurement process and several new digital X-rays have been installed at hospitals at Diamond, New Amsterdam, Linden and Mibicuri.
In addition, Minister Anthony disclosed that the ultrasound machines are one of the key modalities used in diagnostics and the government intends to procure more.
“There are other critical types of equipment that we would need on the ward, in some of the critical care units that we have, so we will be buying those. In terms of our Heart programme, we want to get some more ECG machines, so we want a lot of our facilities to have them, so this is another set of equipment that we will be buying,” Dr. Anthony said.
Meanwhile, the Minister of Health said that with the expansion of the women’s health programme, more cryotherapy equipment for health facilities is needed. He said too that government will also be procuring more laboratory equipment to facilitate the number of tests being offered to the public.
“So that amount of money would be spent in this direction,” Minister Anthony concluded.
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