AS efforts continue to improve healthcare delivery countrywide, a nursing school is currently being constructed on the plot of land where the old New Amsterdam Hospital stood decades ago.

According to Regional Chairman, David Armogan, preparatory work has commenced with a contractor from Corentyne having been awarded the project.

Armogan, after a recent Regional Democratic Council (RDC) statutory meeting, noted that land clearing has been completed, and filling was slated to commence shortly.

The project, he said, aims to establish a nursing school on the old hospital site, along with accommodation to allow nurses from outside the region to live and study within the district.

The new nursing school is part of government’s plans to boost healthcare across the country and it is being constructed simultaneously with a new hospital in the township.

In January, President Dr. Irfaan Ali had turned the sod for the construction of a US$161 million hospital in New Amsterdam which will be a major hub linking both the regional and countrywide healthcare facilities.

“This hospital in Region six is expected to be the hub and everything around it will be the mechanisms. We will have all the specialists and they will all be connected through telemedicine to every other facility in this region whether in Canje Creek or Baracara, wherever you are. Those health centres and hospitals will be connected to this hospital through telemedicine,” the Head of State had said.

Once completed, the new facility will be linked to the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC) which will be connected to Mount Sinai Hospital in New York and other major hospitals around the world through telemedicine.

Dr. Ali had told residents that the goal is to provide optimum healthcare services to the general public. This major investment, he said, coincides with several other upgrades to critical infrastructure in the region.

The President had stressed the importance of humaneness and service in medicine, urging the Ministry of Health and those within the health sector to prioritise improving care and service quality to match investments.

Meanwhile, Vice-President, Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo, earlier this week, announced, in Berbice, that once the new hospital comes on stream in New Amsterdam, the current one will be transformed into a mental health facility.

He further explained that the new hospital will be of a European standard with five operating theatres.

“The kind of care here is what you will get in Europe.

“We plan to the take the old hospital (currently in operation) rehabilitate it and that will then become the mental health facility for the country, so the old hospital would be converted into the mental health hospital,” he had said.

This he said will change the quality of healthcare all together.

Further he told those gathered that with the completion of six of the twelve hospitals which are expected to be completed by mid-next year, about 3,000 people will be hired with that figure expected to double when all are completed.

“We have started recruiting and training doctors, nurses, people at every skill level”, he had stressed.