–says Dr. Anthony

WITH Guyana’s healthcare sector currently undergoing rapid transformation, Minister of Health, Dr. Frank Anthony has said that authorities here are leveraging technology and improving training methods to deal with the current challenges.

Dr. Anthony made these remarks during a virtual dialogue hosted by the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO) on strengthening primary healthcare to build resilient systems.

Regarding the current state of primary healthcare in Guyana, Dr. Anthony told the virtual meeting that when persons are diagnosed with conditions that cannot be dealt with at that level, they are moved to district hospitals or regional facilities for the required care.

He added that there are also referral hospitals which are currently being enhanced even as plans are progressing to build 12 new hospitals, which will help to make the referral process seamless.

Similarly, with laboratory services, the Health Minister said that services that cannot be conducted at the primary healthcare level are done at the regional level and the results are sent back to those facilities.

As such, he noted that authorities are leveraging the use of technology to ensure that other services like X-ray or CT scans can be interpreted at the regional level and then sent back to the respective communities.

“So these are ways in which we are trying to leverage technology… the system is quite integrated,” Dr. Anthony said.

Meanwhile, he noted that one of the biggest challenges that the ministry is working to tackle and which has also been challenging in the Caribbean/Latin American region, is the loss of healthcare workers.

He said: “If we are going to be able to adequately provide personnel at the primary healthcare level, we have to come up with strategies [for] not only training but how do we retain people and be able to disperse them in different parts of our country.”

According to Dr. Anthony, they have noticed that in the region, there has been active recruitment of healthcare personnel and this continues to pose a challenge to the level of care being provided.

Just last week, he disclosed that very soon, a registered nursing programme will be rolled out to train some 3,000 persons in three years to fight this challenge.

At the time, he had said that they will open this programme to the general public and qualified persons who are interested.

The ministry is hoping to train 1,000 persons this year.