MINISTER of Health Dr Frank Anthony has said that the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) government has been providing and will continue to provide necessary services to improve the lives of Guyanese.

Dr Anthony made these remarks during a recent engagement where he noted that the government has made significant investments in improving lives, specifically in the health sector.

Speaking on some of these services, he indicated that under a programme that was introduced last year, the government was able to test the eyes of close to 68,000 people across the country.

Further, they also provided $15,000 vouchers to help persons get their spectacles and more than 54,000 persons benefitted from that initiative.

“This is what a caring government looks like, this is the PPP/C,” he affirmed.

In relation to dialysis care, Dr Anthony said that the President authorised that every dialysis patient must get $600,000 every year.

With this, he said that the government was able to help 129 patients in 2021, and 326 in 2022. By 2023, the number of beneficiaries has climbed to 438 and in 2024 some 550 persons received the life-saving treatment.

To this end, Dr Anthony said not only did they provide resources for persons to get access to dialysis, but also work was done with a number of private sector partners to introduce dialysis centres in various regions.
This he said is in comparison to a $300,000 one-off grant that the former APNU+AFC administration gave to some 64 dialysis patients in 2019. As a result of this, he said many persons were unable to afford their dialysis treatment.

“So, when these guys wake up and they go on press conferences and try to palaver like if they have the people’s interest at heart, we must let people know how heartless they were, because when they had an opportunity to be able to give service to these same patients, they did not do that,” he said.

However, he said that the PPP/C government is providing these types of services so that, “our people can live a good life.”

Additionally, Dr Anthony told the gathering that the government has also been focusing on the two main cancers that affect women here, breast cancer and cervical cancer. He noted that they are providing vaccines that help to prevent the latter.

Further to this, testing is also being provided and as such, last year for the first time in the country’s history, some 12,000 HPV tests were done.

Meanwhile, generally, the health minister indicated that President Ali and the government went further to introduce a new measure called the universal health voucher.

With this, some 500,000 persons across the country would receive a $10,000 voucher to have tests done at various laboratories across the country.

Dr Anthony said that they have met with all the labs and have standardised the costs for these tests.
“So, we don’t talk, we deliver and everything that we promised in our manifesto, we have delivered it, and we are now going beyond the manifesto,” the health minister affirmed.