An ambulance service is a most critical part of a country’s health care delivery system. Though known traditionally to respond to serious incidents such as crashes and other related types, this service is available on a 24 hour basis; is of an emergency nature that is also mandated to answer calls relating to maternity, persons falling ill suddenly, and even those who may have been ailing at home for some time, but whose condition, deteriorating, necessitate urgent medical intervention.

Even those, whose, condition do not really require this emergency mode of transportation, also request such a service, on the belief that they will have instant medical attention. This explains partly, why the triage system has been established, to determine patients’ physical condition for immediate medical intervention, or not.
The state health system has been given a further boost in keeping with its programme of ensuring the health of citizens, with the recent acquisition of seven ambulances costing $59.5M. These vehicles have been distributed as follows: two to the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation; one each to the hospitals at Charity, Region 2; Leonora, Region 3; Fort Wellington, Region 5; Port Mourant, Region 6; and Linden, Region 10.
The manner of distribution is testimony to a detail plan in ensuring the even distribution of resources to the regions, according to those communities services that will enhance timely response and intervention measures, necessary for those in need.
Far too many times, there have been cases of very ill persons whose lives may have been saved but for a lack of both prompt transportation and medical attention. These emergency vehicles, it is reported, will have on board at least a doctor and a nurse, who will be trained in the different aspects of acute medicine in order to manage critical cases in critical and emergency situations. This will greatly assist in reducing such a likelihood.
Without dispute, the national health system, of which the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation is its central point, is now offering services, which citizens could have only imagined about two decades ago. Though still a process in transition, the modernisation of the country’s national health system continues, with each improvement, whether in procedure, trained personnel, or service, designed to deliver quality and timely health care to those in need. Being the recipient of the second largest budgetary allocation after Education, this sector, allocated $19.2B for 2013, continues to justify the exponential sums invested in its grand mission of taking care of the physical and mental challenges and needs of the nation.
The launching of Guyana Health Vision 2013-2020 late last year, signals a sector that has grown in quality, and is now ready to break new grounds in national health care, by unveiling a comprehensive plan that aims at making persons resident in Guyana, foreigners too, the healthiest in the Caribbean and the Americas by the year 2020. The aim is to put the country’s health service at an international level.
This is quite laudable, with citizens benefitting from A-class medical services. This innovation, coupled with the proposed Specialty Hospital holds tremendous possibilities for the development of health tourism.
Guyanese can now look forward to being better served by a much improved ambulance service, and being healthier with Health Vision 2020.