FINANCE Minister, Dr. Ashni Singh, in his mid-year report presented to the National Assembly last Thursday, said that the health sector is expected to benefit from an increase in health care providers with the graduation of more than 670 persons, including professional nurses, nursing assistants, post-basic midwives, single trained midwives, pharmacy assistants, community health workers, audiology practitioners, and X-ray and medical laboratory technicians.
The deployment of these medical personnel is critical to addressing the growing demand for health care services across the country.
The report pointed out that during the first half of the year, the government spent more than $111.8M to develop the human resource capacity in the health sector. The allocated funds facilitated training for more than 1,200 students in nursing, clinical and technical fields across the country.
The available funding ensures that quality health services are provided to Guyanese throughout the country and gives youths the opportunity to pursue a variety of medical careers.
This will definitely provide a significant boost to health care as indeed there is a shortage of medical personnel at some of the public health institutions which puts a strain on the existing personnel since their workload becomes heavier. Ultimately, the quality of service is adversely affected.
So, it was good news to hear from the minister that the public health institutions will be infused with such a high number of personnel.
Perhaps, human resources are more critical to the successful functioning of medical institutions more than any other because of the fact that these institutions take humans who are ill or injured. And while sometimes medical personnel are criticised for not carrying out their jobs effectively and many times rightly so, appreciation should also be shown for the yeoman humanitarian service they provide. Working in medical institutions is not an easy task by any means because it is very stressful, especially in large ones.
The problem of a shortage of medical personnel is global but it is more pronounced in the developing world because of migration and low levels of economic development.
A worldwide shortage of health care workers, coupled with a disproportionate concentration of health workers in developed nations and urban areas, stands in the way of achieving such key public health priorities as reducing child and maternal mortality, increasing vaccine coverage, and battling epidemics such as HIV/AIDS.
Currently, there are 2.4 million too few physicians, nurses, and midwives to provide essential health interventions, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO). It said this is a shortage that will require adopting a global approach to getting human resources. Various groups, including the WHO, professional organisations, and others are working to address both the global shortage as well as the circumstances and practices that encourage the disproportionate migration of health workers from developing nations to wealthier countries.
A variety of phenomena have contributed to the existing global shortage of clinicians. The WHO 2006 World Health Report outlined many of the causes of disproportionate health worker migration. For example, in developed countries, predominantly in the northern hemisphere, a growing aging population and increasingly high-tech health care are exacerbating the demand for health care workers. In addition, poor planning and underinvestment in health worker education has left developed nations with too few domestic health workers to meet the demand, according to the WHO report.
In many less developed countries, predominantly in the southern hemisphere, economic policies limit investment in public-sector health care and reduce funds for health worker education. At the same time, according to the WHO, the AIDS epidemic has placed unprecedented burdens, including high rates of HIV-related illness and death among health workers, on these already stressed health systems.
Faced with poor working conditions and limited economic prospects in their home countries, many health workers choose to migrate to fill the demand in wealthier nations.
Despite the constraints, the Government of Guyana has demonstrated an unswerving commitment to improving the health sector and anyone with a sense of objectivity would agree that the medical service is much better than what it was two decades ago.
But there are still some irritants which need to be addressed and one to which greater attention should be paid is the attitude of personnel at medical institutions.
While generally, members of staff at hospitals and health centres are caring, helpful, courteous, kind and respectful, which should be the norm, there are still far too many who are uncaring, unhelpful, discourteous, unkind and downright rude.
The latter should not be working in medical institutions, and in this regard, more emphasis should be placed on attitudinal training as well as more meticulous screening of personnel during recruitment.