– at 8th Caribbean College of Surgeons Conference
The first ever South American Conference of the Caribbean College of Surgeons opened Thursday evening at the Umana Yana, with President Bharrat Jagdeo sharing policymakers’ perspective in the health sector. His remarks came after President of the Caribbean College of Surgeons Professor Vijay Naraynsingh spoke of Guyana’s geographical peculiarities, the challenges which they pose on surgeons, and the willingness of the College to learn from the Guyana experience.
Professor Naraynsingh said the practitioners of surgery in Guyana are faced with unique challenges compared to other territories in the Caribbean, because of the remoteness of certain targeted areas.
President Jagdeo explained , that while Guyana’s geographical size poses problems for surgeons, it is also challenging for almost every other sector, and has been the reason for the crafting of a sizeable budget to meet the per capita cost of infrastructure in the country.
The health sector, along with education, was the first area which President Jagdeo said was given priority attention by his administration after overcoming the huge hurdle of debt which accumulated 40 percent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
Over the years, the budgetary allocations for the health sector have been growing significantly, and President Jagdeo said these have seen the construction of eight new hospitals, 700 youths studying medicine in scholarships abroad to build the human resource capacity in the sector, and greater distribution of drugs to vulnerable communities.
“Every indigenous community now has a health hut, one or two health workers. Of course the standards are elementary, but we can’t put a hospital in every village which has 250 or 400 people, and they live 30 miles over difficult terrain from the next village. We are in radio contact with all of these villages. We have 70 airstrips across Guyana to medivac complicated cases to Georgetown.”
Despite these achievements, the President acknowledged that it is ‘far from perfect’, since the quantum of resources in the sector is sometimes inadequate.
Recognizing that tertiary health care is difficult to afford in the public health system, Government has partnered with several overseas groups such as the Caribbean Heart Institute (CHI) to provide services to patients at a reduced fee.
With affordability becoming a major issue across the region, the President also highlighted the health challenges which climate change will bring.
Nevertheless, with Guyana transforming its economy on a low carbon trajectory, Government intends to make full use of its investment in fibre optic cable systems to improve health care and delivery.
The Guyana Government, through the Ministry of Health, gave full support to the conference which will see 42 papers being presented, six of which will be done by Guyana.
Prior conferences were held in Barbados, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, St Lucia, Antigua and The Bahamas, and several more are upcoming. The conference holds the reputation as the only one of its kind in the Caribbean that seeks to find innovative ways of training surgeons to a certain level to meet the needs of remote populations.
The Ministry of Health’s efforts to establish the first diabetic foot programme in the Caribbean was also acknowledged.
Professor Naraynsingh disclosed that Dr Dean Sharma, one of two honourees of the conference, will be recognized for his service to Guyana and the region for over four decades.