– Health Minister tells PAHO high-level dialogue

SIGNIFICANT strides have been made to improve Guyana’s healthcare sector over the past two years, and, this year, some $1Billion is expected to be invested in the sector to continue the ongoing transformation.

This was revealed by Minister of Health, Dr Frank Anthony, who made brief remarks during a high-level dialogue, on Wednesday, hosted by the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO), under the theme, “Health for All: Strengthening primary healthcare to build resilient systems.”

According to the Health Minister, since entering office, his ministry has collaborated with PAHO to develop a comprehensive package of primary healthcare services and, as a result, has moved the country to levels four and five.

To this end, Dr. Anthony stated that over the last year, health authorities have been working to ensure that the infrastructure corresponds to what is being done concerning the implementation of these health packages.

He added that while close to $1Billion was spent last year to upgrade healthcare infrastructure across the country, another $1B will be invested this year.

“This year, we’re going to spend another billion dollars in doing the same thing; so that when people come to access care, those facilities would be ready,” he said.

Meanwhile, he noted that proper diagnostic services should also be in place to implement the package of services. Authorities, he added, have also invested in equipment for such and have decided on a package each health facility must have to deliver this level of care.

In addition to ensuring that the necessary equipment is placed in these facilities, the government has introduced rapid kits so that diagnostics for infectious diseases can be done quickly and without much training for health workers.

He noted that the government recognises the need to train more personnel to implement the services, and as a result, the ministry has dedicated resources to ensure same.

“And over the last year or so, we’ve been able to train a number of community health-worker assistants in terms of pharmacy, laboratory medical imaging. We’ve also started an ambitious programme to train nurses and that is currently ongoing in terms of trying to introduce technologies,” Dr Anthony said.

He said the ministry had added telemedicine to its range of services and piloted telemedicine programmes for remote communities and those have worked well thus far. That, he said, will be scaled up to add at least 20 sites this year.

Additionally, he noted that this would be integrated at the national level to track further and monitor disease outbreaks around the country.

Dr Anthony added, “So I think we recognise that primary health care is the foundation of our health care system, and that’s why we’re placing so much emphasis on the development of primary health care to give people access, to ensure people have an expanded range of services they can get and also to bring it as close as possible to