GUYANA, like most third-world countries, has the ambition of achieving the social and economic standards which prevail in first-world countries like the United States or Germany. Guyana is much better situated than most to achieve those standards in a short time because it has become an oil country earning fairly bountiful revenues which it could invest in social and economic development, at the same time taking meticulous care to avoid being caught in the trap of the Dutch Disease.

The Dutch Disease, sometimes called the Resource Curse, occurs when a country which has become an oil producer succumbs to the mesmerising gravitational pull of oil and oil revenues, resulting in the neglect and contraction of former industries. When oil resources become exhausted or revenues fall owing to the vagaries of international oil prices, such countries rapidly slide into economic hardship because their other industries would have declined or contracted.

Guyana is employing its oil revenues as an investment in its social and economic development. In economic development, the country’s infrastructure is being transformed with new roads and bridges. Old industries, especially agricultural, are being revitalised, and new ones, like soya and maise, are being embarked upon. In social development, the primary focus has been on education and health, though comparatively minor social concerns like pensions and shelters for the homeless have not been forgotten. In health, for example, it is mostly the macro segments upon which the media reports. It reports on the new hospitals, the training of various categories of medical personnel, the construction of paediatric and maternal hospitals, and so on, but far less notice is given to smaller specialised segments of health care. One such segment is eye care among children and the elderly.

In colonial times, public diagnosis and treatment for eye and dental ailments among school children was extremely sporadic. Most children who had dental problems or needed spectacles knew their parents would have been unable to bear the expenses of their treatment, so they had to suffer in silence. Today, both the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Education are committed to ensuring the health of all children. In eye care, Dr Shailendra Sugrim, Specialist Ophthalmologist and Head of the Ophthalmology Department of the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC), has been lending technical expertise and guidance to the programme of testing the eyes of all school children, with those who need spectacles obtaining them through a voucher system.

Dr Sugrim pointed out that the three main eye ailments which affect children are myopia (near-sightedness), hyperopia (far-sightedness), and astigmatism, which causes rays of light to focus in different directions owing to the shape of the cornea. All three could be corrected with spectacles, but if children and parents neglect using these corrective aids, their eyes could deteriorate into amblyopia or ‘lazy’ eyes, resulting in blurred vision that cannot be corrected in adulthood. This programme, which ensures that the children of Guyana enjoy healthy eyes, is among the most important and necessary health initiatives undertaken and is of historic importance. The elderly will also receive free eye tests and spectacles.

The programme is bound to be successful since it is adequately funded and involves dedicated and able professionals like Dr Sugrim, thereby moving Guyana nearer to First World standards.