—More than $85B invested as national hospital emerges among Caribbean’s best

JUST five years ago, the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC) was operating without a functional X-ray machine.
Today, following more than $85 billion in investments, Guyana’s premier public hospital is constructing a state-of-the-art medical imaging centre, installing advanced diagnostic equipment and expanding specialised services as part of a wider transformation of the country’s health-care system.
Speaking on the latest episode of the Starting Point podcast, Chief Executive Officer of the GPHC, Robbie Rambarran, said the institution has undergone a dramatic evolution, moving from a facility once dependent on donated equipment to one that now boasts some of the most advanced medical technology in the region.
Reflecting on the hospital’s journey, Rambarran stressed that its transformation has been a collective effort involving healthcare workers, administrators and government support.
He recalled that years ago, the hospital struggled with outdated infrastructure and limited resources, often relying on second-hand equipment and supplies donated from overseas.
Today, he said, the situation has changed significantly due to strategic government investments and a growing economy.
“Now with the advent of oil and that new prosperity, we are able to, the president with his mandates, invest more in healthcare,” Rambarran said.
He added that leadership and teamwork have been critical to ensuring that those investments translate into improved healthcare services.

“Having that investment, we need to have people who are there to champion every level and be invested. Understanding the dynamics of healthcare and having been around the hospital for 20-plus years, has really helped me to position the hospital, shape that journey, and work with the technical people, the doctors, the nurses, and every category of staff, to listen to them, hear their mandate, their wishes, their ambitions, and work towards that collective goal,” he said.
The facility has been supported by investment in a number of areas. Over the last five years, the government has invested in capacity building and expertise training as well as upgrading equipment and introducing new technology in the hospital; investments that Rambarran says have made the institution a regional leader.
As he shared, “Over the last five years, excluding 2026, there have been $85.2 billion invested. A lot of that money is spent on our staff. We have a high payroll, approximately a billion dollars a month. We have over 2,500 staff and we are still short. We have highly technical, skilled staff and all the salary increases over the last five years have really raised the wage.”
He noted that the impact of this could be seen in areas such as post-graduate training, highlighting that the facility currently has some 21 post-graduate training programmes being conducted for doctors and nurses, in collaboration with the University of Guyana and several universities abroad, such as McMaster, the University of Calgary, the University of Vanderbilt, and many others.
Investment in equipment has also been a major pillar of the institution’s growth. As Rambarran noted, the GPHC is home to state-of-the-art equipment, some of which is not present anywhere else in the Caribbean.
As he stated, “There is equipment that we have at [the] Georgetown Hospital that is not even in the Caribbean. A lot of this has been on infrastructural improvement. I always said once we give the people the tools, they shouldn’t complain. Now what we have to do is work on the human-resource aspect to deliver that service to the people.”
This investment does not end at equipment, however, and extends to the development of infrastructure.
Highlighting the addition of a new medical imaging centre and how much the hospital has developed, Rambarran shared, “If you go to the hospital, you will see a new building going up, that is our medical imaging centre. In 2021, when I went back to the hospital, it did not have a functional X-ray machine. This is our national hospital that did not have a functional X-ray machine in 2021. We replaced those machines and now we are constructing this medical imaging centre.”
The new centre will house a Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) machine, the first of its kind in the public sector. Rambarran noted that the facility will also be equipped with two CT machines, one recently acquired.
It will further feature two brand new mammography machines and an extracorporeal shockwave lithotripsy (ESWL) machine used for the treatment of kidney stones. This investment, representing more than a billion dollars, will transform the hospital’s diagnostic capabilities.
This is why Rambarran says the hospital is the nation’s leading healthcare facility and among the best in the region, stating, “ [The] GPHC is the best health institution in this country. I will even give myself the liberty to say it is in the top five in the Caribbean. It might be higher, but I’ll be cautious.”
The driving force of this success has been leadership, Rambarran noted.
Citing President, Dr Irfaan Ali’s experience serving as a member of the board of the Georgetown Hospital as well as his role as Minister of Finance, he noted that this stronger leadership is what has made the health-care push not just possible, but a success.
“That has really made my job easier and with that drive, building out the right team of people at Georgetown Hospital; getting the right leadership persons in the various areas so they can champion, we do not sleep, so we get things going. We are very inspired. We love to say the best is yet to come,” the CEO said.