THE building housing the one-stop diabetes centre at Lusignan, East Coast Demerara, is completed and being furnished with suitable medical equipment.

The facility is expected to be opened before year end, Health Minister, Dr. Frank Anthony, said last Saturday during a community outreach in Melanie, East Coast Demerara.

The one-stop diabetes centre would have all the services required to test or treat for diabetes under one building.

In Budget 2022, the government had announced that some $35 million was allocated for the establishment of the centre.

In recognising some of the challenges faced with health centres, Government has allocated $100 million for every region to fund their improvement.

“In many of our health centres and so forth, we have already started and in some cases completed the infrastructure improvement,” the Health Minister stated.

While acknowledging that persons often complain about health centres not having medicines, the minister noted that the Government has been working steadfastly to resolve this issue and is supplying about 85 to 90 per cent of the medicines on their essential list.

He also expressed interest in working closely with residents on the East Coast of Demerara to improve the health sector and have started training of health care workers.

“So, later on maybe we’ll be talking to some of you who have interest or know somebody who has an interest in doing nursing or becoming a community health worker… we have about 20 different training programmes in the Ministry of Health and we want and need people,” Minister Anthony related.

Meanwhile, he related to the residents in attendance that regional hospitals will be built from Skeldon, Region Six, all the way across the coast to Anna Regina, Region Two. One of those will be in Enmore.

The one at Enmore, he stated, will have at least 75 in-patient beds, a modern accident and emergency section, modern laboratories and a modern imagining suite which would not just consist of x-rays and ultrasounds but a modern computed tomography (CT) scan, free of cost.

“No longer will you have to leave here to go to Georgetown and then pay maybe between 30 to 70,000 dollars for a CT scan. We will be able to offer it here, free of cost so that people can get the best imaging technology,” Minister Anthony said.