–Dr Jagdeo recalls PPP/C gov’t had to dispose of $10B worth of expired drugs inherited from APNU+AFC
–GPHC functioned unaudited from 2015 to 2020

GENERAL Secretary of the People’s Progressive Party (PPP), Dr Bharrat Jagdeo, has said that despite inheriting a battered health sector from the former A Partnership for National Unity and the Alliance for Change (APNU+AFC) government, the PPP administration has been able to revive the sector and take it to new heights with critical investments.

Dr Jagdeo, during a press conference on Thursday, said: “Our track record is there to be seen. We can defend it in any circumstance; we can show that it is vastly superior to anything that APNU did.”
The PPP General Secretary said within a year, the PPP administration did more for the people of Guyana compared to the five-year tenure of the APNU+AFC.

Addressing specific issues regarding the health sector, he said: “So, recently we discovered we had a big backlog at the Georgetown Hospital,” adding: “Now, let me tell you the context. First of all, when we got back into office, we had to destroy about $10 billion worth of drugs that is medical supplies, etc…, that were already expired.”

This situation resulted in the PPP/C having to replenish the stock of drugs and cater to the increasing demand that existed.
Additionally, Dr Jagdeo highlighted that the APNU+AFC had also left the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC) in a deplorable state, with a number of equipment and laboratories inoperable.

He revealed too that there was no audit conducted on GPHC between 2015 and 2020, during the APNU+AFC’s reign.
“So, we had an intense period of trying to fix this. Do you know that between 2015 and 2020, not a single audit was done for the Georgetown Hospital? That is their [APNU+AFC] legacy. Not a single audit was done between 2015 and 2020,” the General Secretary said.

On the contrary, from the time that the PPP/C has been in office, GPHC has submitted their financial statements up to 2022.
“So, this administration has had to go back now and recreate their financial statements from 2015 all the way to 2022… [those audits] are before the audit office now,” Dr Jagdeo said.
Today, the hospital and the entire sector is on an upward trajectory. It was reported recently that with the official pilot programme of an Electronic Medical Records system launched at the hospital, Adviser to the Minister of Health, Dr Leslie Ramsammy, said that the government is aggressively moving to transform and digitise the health sector.

Dr. Ramsammy made those remarks during the recent launch of the EMR system at the GPHC, where he said the activity was deliberately designed to say to the country that the health sector is in a hurry to embrace technology.
He said: “We are making an aggressive move to transform the sector from a sector that made minimal use of digital technology to one that optimises fully digital technology in improving healthcare in our country.”

Along with this, he said that steps are being taken to implement digital systems in other parts of the hospital, and by extension the health sector.
Dr Ramsammy said that there is a functional laboratory information system that is being interlinked with all clinics.
Additionally, arrangements are being made for the pharmacy and laboratory to have inter-operability capacity to be linked into the EMR system.

“We are working with the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) to ensure that Guyana rolls out a high-quality electronic medical record, so this is just the beginning of that effort,” he said.
Further, Dr. Ramsammy indicated that while the GPHC has pioneered every advancement made in the health sector in the country, it plans, once again, to take over leadership of healthcare in the Caribbean.