-President Ali says, points to the desire to have an efficient, reliable system
-lauds ‘successful’ partnership with Mount Sinai and Hess Corporation

WITH rapid transformation taking place across Guyana’s healthcare system, President Dr. Irfaan Ali has emphasised that the changes are part of a clearly defined strategy and the result of solid partnerships that seek to give Guyanese access to world-class health services.

The Head of State was at the time participating in a panel discussion titled, “Empowering Healthcare: Strategies and Collaboration for Transformative Change in Guyana” which was held at the Concordia Annual Summit in New York City. The discussion was posted on his official Facebook page on Sunday.

President Ali during the discussion focused on the ongoing efforts to transform the country’s healthcare landscape with partners, Mount Sinai and Hess Corporation.

He said that with all that has taken place thus far, there must be a clear vision. “I think you have to have a very clearly defined strategy, and, as a government, we had a clear strategy as to what we want the healthcare system to look like.”

President Ali added that healthcare cannot be delivered without a system and the system must ensure efficiency and reliability as it must also ensure that there is a mechanism to support healthcare provision procedurally and systematically.

“We are very clear that what we wanted to develop [is] a healthcare ecosystem, and that ecosystem is about everything that surrounds quality healthcare provision,” he added.

That, he noted, involves ensuring that the population is healthy and that there are available tools to guarantee that the healthcare system responds to the needs of the people in a proactive way.

Building this out, he explained is not simple as Guyana is starting from a baseline now with the development of a patient care management system and a health management information system.

While many people may believe that this would be easy, he indicated that there must be adequate legislative provisions in place before such is done.

These provisions, he indicated would protect patient information, ensure doctors are professional and set standards and regulations for the systems.

“So, that is where the complication came. [However], Mount Sinai, being in this business for so long, working in Kenya, was the partner that helped us to unlock all of this; and a process that would have taken maybe four or five years in getting those legislations, those regulations, those standards in place, we were able to do in months.” President Ali said.

It was then that he highlighted that the partnership between the Government of Guyana, Hess Corporation and Mount Sinai has brought tremendous, accelerated success.

President Ali indicated that significant strides have been made in several spheres of the sector so far, as more than 70 per cent of nursery children have been screened and received care as a part of the school health programme.

Additionally, there have been significant investments made in telemedicine and digitisation as Dr. Ali noted that Guyana possibly has the highest number of telemedicine stations per capita in the region.

With this, comprehensive, centralised pathology and laboratory services have been established across the country even in remote communities.

He added, “I just want to take some time to salute the partnership that we’ve been able to build between Mount Sinai and the Ministry of Health, and also the local health providers, who have dedicated the time and are willing to go through the retraining and retooling, because there’s a lot of that going on.”

The Head of State told the gathering that the work continues on the entire ecosystem which consists of the human resource side, the legislations and regulations bringing together the rules and the procedures to ensure that improvements are made and bring even better results.

The Government of Guyana, in 2022, signed a monumental contract with Mount Sinai Health System and Hess Corporation to aid in overhauling Guyana’s entire health system.

At that time, President Ali noted that the signing was part of the government’s mandate to position Guyana as a destination of choice for healthcare services globally and transform services in both the public and private sectors locally.