Following Parliamentary remarks…
PEOPLE’S National Congress Reform-One Guyana (PNCR-1G) Member of Parliament (MP), Mr. Basil Williams declared, last week, that the local health care system is appalling. But when, in the National Assembly, he implied that former MP, Mr. Winston Murray died because of shortcomings within the sector, Minister of Health, Dr. Leslie Ramsammy called it a “shameful” contention.
Williams  asked: “How come you don’t have a neurosurgeon? Why Mr. Murray had to die because you could not find a neurosurgeon?”
In an invited response, Ramsammy declared that Williams, unfairly, misrepresented what happened to Murray.
He said: “Mr. Williams should be ashamed of himself to use Mr. Murray’s death to demonstrate that the Opposition has very little to complain about, when it comes to the health sector.”
The Minister said the fact is that the doctors at both Dr. Balwant Singh Hospital and Georgetown Public Hospital (GPH) did everything they could for Murray.
“Dr. (Ivor) Crandon, himself, verified that nothing further could have been done,” Ramsamy recalled.
Murray, in the latter part of last November, was rushed to the Balwant Singh Hospital after collapsing at Houston, outside a lotto tickets booth, on the way to his Continental Park home, also on the East Bank Demerara. He was, subsequently, conveyed to the GPH.
A scan, soon after his admission, revealed that Murray was suffering from severe haemorrhaging in the brain as well as diabetes and hypertension.
Jamaica-based Dr. Crandon flew here, at Guyana Government expense, examined Murray and pronounced that no surgical intervention could be undertaken on the patient because of the state of his vital organs, including no responses from his brain.
A medical team at the GPH, led by Dr. Sean Legall, was ready and on standby to operate but the doctors at both the GPH and Balwant Singh Hospital, in consultation with Dr. Crandon, agreed that surgery was not possible and that it was best to have the gravely ill Murray managed medically, through life support.
Prior to that, Crandon was in constant contact with the consultant physicians in Internal Medicine and Neurosurgery at the GPH.

EXACT INTERVENTIONS
Ramsammy said: “Dr.  Crandon verified that everything Dr. Legall and his team did were the exact interventions that he would have made.”
The minister said Guyana is not the only country in the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) without a full time, resident neurosurgeon.
Outside of Barbados, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago, none other within CARICOM has a full-time one, he pointed out.
Ramsammy said: “Guyana offers neurosurgical services that are just being provided at a basic level on a daily basis.”
He said, currently, Guyana has the service of a visiting neurosurgeon in Dr. Crandon, a Guyanese professional attached to the University Hospital in Kingston, Jamaica, who visits the GPH once a month.
“At those times, Dr. Crandon works with a group of young surgeons at the GPH and Balwant Singh Hospital. These doctors are under the training and supervision of Dr Crandon and doctors, like Dr. Sean Legall, provide every-day services at GPH, where they are able to do uncomplicated neurosurgery on a daily basis,” Ramsammy explained.
He said Guyana has never had the services of a full-time neurosurgeon for any lengthy period.
Alluding to the health sector’s status under the PNC regime, Ramsammy said, in the 1980s, there was a neurosurgeon from Africa attached to the GPH but he left Guyana and never returned.
He said, between 2004 and 2009, a neurosurgeon from India was attached to the GPH, but he has, since, secured a fellowship at an American university hospital and is presently in the United States (U.S.) but promised to return.
Meanwhile, Dr. Crandon is helping the Ministry of Health and the GPH to build a compressive neurosurgery department, where young surgeons will be able to provide daily neurosurgery in consultation with Dr. Crandon, Ramsammy said.
When he spoke in Parliament, Williams mentioned his recent visit to the U. S., to pitch his presidential bid and said he listened to the concerns of the Guyanese Diaspora.
According to him: “They are very concerned. Where they are, the health care system is good and they would love to come back home but they wouldn’t want to know that, in Guyana, they enter an ambulance and all it is doing is providing a taxi service. It should be equipped.”
Ramsammy said Williams is, as usual, wrong.
“He tried to represent the fact that there is no resident neurosurgeon in Guyana as evidence that the health sector has not developed over the years. The health sector has made significant advances in the past decade. There are more specialists in Guyana today than ever before in our history,” the Minister said.
Ten per cent of the total current expenditure in the 2011 Budget is dedicated to health with a $14 billion allocation.