GPHC refutes statements in Kaieteur News article
MANAGEMENT of the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC) has reacted strongly to an article appearing in yesterday’s issue of the Kaieteur News, under the headline ‘Mabura accident victim’s wife lambastes GPHC personnel’. The challenged wording said, in part “…relatives rushed to the Georgetown Hospital and were surprised to see that the staff were not prepared for the patients, who were transferred from the Linden Hospital”.
The GPHC stoutly refuted this and other statements contained in the publication, describing them as ‘extremely ludicrous and bordering on being libelous’.
GPHC said, in a release yesterday: “The Accident and Emergency Unit of the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation is always in a state of preparedness, especially for patients who are being transferred from the Regional Institutions. This would mean, therefore, that there would have been communication between the two institutions prior to the arrival of the patients”.
The release mentioned that, in this particular instance, the hospital received a telephone call from the Linden Hospital Complex around noon on Saturday, June 23 and the A&E staff had since started preparing to receive these patients, the first of whom arrived approximately 17:00 hrs, five hours after.
GPHC said the nursing staff were present and working feverishly, while doctors from the specialist areas (Orthopaedics, General Surgery, inter alia) were summoned to the A&E Unit to complement the A&E doctors. The nursing supervisors were also present on the floor. Simultaneously, staff at the A&E Unit was also battling with a gunshot case in addition to a few other emergency cases.
“They performed creditably. Therefore, to suggest otherwise is incomprehensible,” the statement said.
As regards the availability of the attendants and the service they provide, management admits to this being a sore point but assures that drastic measures are being taken to address this problem with much urgency.
It said a tender for a new attendant service is awaiting approval from the National Procurement and Tender Administration Board.
The GPHC Management said it is aware of the Kaieteur News ploy of using the hospital in its headlines to capture the attention of prospective buyers, adding: “More often than not, the headlines are hardly relative to the actual article and some reporters hardly, if ever, seek to verify these claims before they are published.”