THE Mahaicony Cottage Hospital in Region Five (Mahaica/Berbice) has been furnished with a state-of-the-art operating theatre with two operating rooms.

Construction and equipping of the theatre has been completed and specialist staff at the Hospital are now adding the finishing touches necessary for the facilities to be certified prior to being commissioned to provide both routine and emergency surgeries for people within the region who require these services.
Regional Health Officer of the region, Dr. Steven Cheefoon, disclosed that staff were in the process of swabbing the two operating rooms to eliminate bacteria and that a team from the Ministry of Public Health in Georgetown was expected to visit and inspect the theatre and then give the go-ahead for provision of the service which will eliminate the need for persons in the region to have to travel to Georgetown or New Amsterdam to receive routine or emergency surgeries.

“We are now working hard to ensure that we do all that we need to do to get the green light from the inspection team, so that we can make this services [sic] available to not only folks in Region Five, but all who may need it within the next week or two,” he said.
Regional Executive Officer of Region Five, Ovid Morrison, disclosed: “Last year there were no facilities for routine or emergency surgeries at any of the health care facilities in Region Five and so we in the region made a collective decision that we wanted this to happen. We got the support from central government and we are now at the stage where construction and equipment of this facility is [sic] complete and barring the formalities of inspection and certification, we are now ready to provide the service for all who may need it.”

Dr. Cheefoon disclosed that over the past five years, most patients in Region Five needing routine surgery had to wait three or four months to get surgery in Georgetown.

He said: “This will be no longer necessary; we will do those surgeries right here. We are expecting that when we get up and running, that we will be able to help people from other administrative regions also.”

He added: ”Because of the standards to which the theatre and the operating rooms have been built when they have these big medical outreaches with visiting teams from England and America, they will also use our theatre as one of the sites to operate from.”
He said that members of the Cuban Medical Brigade had agreed to give the Regional Health Service their expertise to do the routine or emergency surgeries.
He said that the new theatre at the hospital is also complemented with the model laboratory that was finished there last year.

The model lab does all bloodwork testing and is also complemented by another state-of-the-art machine which looks at kidney, liver and heart functions among other diagnostics.
“This equipment makes diagnosis easier. They actually bring a service to the people of Region Five that was never there before.”
He said that improvements in the Health Care system in Region Five was all in keeping with the administration’s aim of making top-quality health care accessible and thus more easily affordable within the region.