expected to save $100M annually – says Health Minister

A NEW oxygen generator has been commissioned by the Ministry of Health, specifically at the Lethem Regional Hospital in Region Nine, on Monday. This initiative has been established through a partnership with the United States Embassy in Guyana.
Currently, there are three oxygen generators in Guyana. These can be found in Mahdia, Region Eight, Mabaruma Region One, and currently, in Lethem Region Nine.
Minister of Health, Dr. Frank Anthony, in his remarks, said that the partnership they have with the US, is a very long standing one.

According to the Minister, although they have been doing groundwork to significantly improve the health care in that region, one of the most important ‘ingredients’ in this would be to ensure they have oxygen on site.
“And prior to us having this plant, it was very difficult to get oxygen in the Region, especially in the rainy season. So, it could have been a big challenge, and very often when you have rainy season, and the roads are impassible, you can have all kinds of difficulty here at the hospital,” the minister said.
Speaking with their partners in the US, one of the first things they did was to get the small, mobile oxygen generators.

“The big thing here is that apart from saving a lot of lives, it is also a cost saver to the Ministry of Health. I was told that it would cost us maybe between two and three million dollars just to transport the oxygen from Linden to the region every month. Plus you have to pay for the bottling of the oxygen itself, but now you have the plant here, and you’re doing it here,” he stated
Minister Frank emphasised that this has already saved them close to a hundred million dollars.
He said, “A hundred million dollars, because we didn’t have to spend it on oxygen, we can take that and go build a Health Centre or do something else with it. And that’s how important that is because we’re now making it ourselves.”
Moreover, the minister also spoke about the training of biomedical engineers in Region Nine. He said: “(but) in anticipation of the opening of this facility, we also recognised that we did not have persons trained to do biomedical engineering, and if you’re going to have facilities like this you need people trained. At least to manage the plant,”

The minister pointed out that last year, they ran a programme with a charitable company from the United Kingdom where nearly 30 young Guyanese were trained to become biomedical technicians, with two of them coming from Region Nine.
Meanwhile, the Minister mentioned that a current challenge found in the Regions, specifically Regions Nine, Seven, Eight, and One, was Malaria.
According to the minister, “In the medical terms we would say that Malaria is endemic to these four regions. Well, we want to start changing that. We want to start removing Malaria from these four regions, and a project that we’ve been working on is a project with one of the well-known US University, that is Harvard
“We have a project with them, where we’ll be sending a technical team to this Region. One of the first that we want to do in terms of the elimination of Malaria, is to have a technical team that would come, examine what is really going on,”
Minister Frank added that the team has been in that region for two weeks already, and have done some mapping about what can and cannot be done, and what further steps can be taken to eliminate Malaria from the region.
The Minister has announced their commitment to dedicating several years towards the implementation of this project. It is anticipated that by adhering to these steps, the complete eradication of malaria from region nine will be achievable.