The importance of an efficient and effective health care service is always paramount because it has that vital role of ensuring the health of a nation is at its optimum by not only taking care of its ailing citizens but also by developing preventative programmes to help people to remain healthy.

Having a nation of healthy citizens has far reaching socio-economic long term benefits because a healthy labour force will be more productive and at the same time there will be less strain on the health care service and funds which would have been spent on medical treatment would have been saved. It all goes back to the old adage of “health is wealth.”

Emma Wanjiku in the article “Importance of Good Health Care” pertinently points out: “Health care is one of the most important components in your life. Disease or illness can really mean a down turn in your life. The biggest asset we can have in life therefore is health. Health care is normally defined as the management or treatment of any health problem through the services that might be offered by medical, nursing, dental or any other related service. When you talk about the health care, you are talking of all goods and services that are produced to improve your health. They may be curative, preventative or even palliative solutions. A system of health care is one that is organised to give health services to a population or a group of people.”

“Health care can be for an individual or for a large group of people depending on how the systems are organised. Importance of health care cannot be over emphasised. In society, people are worried about the kinds of systems there are, to deal with issues of health. In developed countries, their systems are designed to cater for all people; whether poor or rich.”

Tailoring an appropriate health care system to meet the needs of each society, especially in developing countries, which lack both human and financial resources, is a complex task but great successes could be achieved with proper commitment and sensible utilisation of the available resources.

In this regard, Cuba is a prime example as it has developed one of the best health care systems in the developing world and has even out done many developed countries. Its achievement in the medical field is truly remarkable and amazing, especially when one considers that it has done so in the face of a nearly five-decade old economic embargo.

In fact, Cuba has developed such a large cadre of medical personnel that is able to dispatch medical brigades across the globe to help its sister developing countries to manage their health care systems as well as to provide training and expertise in specialised areas.

Guyana is one of those countries that has benefitted tremendously from Cuba’s generous help in this regard and to a large extent it has been responsible for the significant transformation of our delivery of health care over the past decade and a half.

Certainly, we still have a far way to go but definitely we have long moved from the days when hospitals were in a dilapidated state, medicine and medical supplies and doctors were in acute shortage. And of course it was not uncommon to have two pregnant women sharing one hospital bed.

Many, who perhaps suffer from amnesia forget those days while some conveniently chose to forget them and instead only attempt to find faults with the present health service and completely ignoring the many positives such as the new or refurbished hospitals not only in the urban areas but across the country; the increased number of doctors and medical personnel, and the availability of specialised services such as eye and heart surgery, kidney transplant, etc.

Our spending on health has massively increased from $750M in 1992 to over $12 billion today or from US$7 to US$80 and this is not a phenomenal figure, but as President Jagdeo noted what it has shown is progressive commitment to the sector by this government.

However, what is also of utmost importance is getting value for money spent and this can only be achieved through proper accountability and on this score it is noteworthy that the President was quite emphatic on this score and correctly so because our resources are scare and therefore it is imperative that we ensure that every dollar expended is properly accounted for.

Speaking on CEOs of medical institutions the President declared: “How they deploy the resources that we give them and how they are meeting some pre-agreed indicators of good quality service; service that would determine whether they are people centred, whether the right attitudes exist in these institutions and whether they are improving access to people.”