Gov’t focusing on development of primary healthcare

The Government of Guyana through the Ministry of Health is placing major emphasis on the development of primary health care delivery.

Health Minister Dr Frank Anthony  and a team of senior health officials on Saturday visited the Number 64 Village and  LAN-LIV-MAN as the facilities hosted residents at ‘Health Centre Day’ activities.

While delivering the feature address, the health minister spoke of the investments that are being made in the primary health care system to bring it up to a certain standard

“We have expended close to one hundred million Guyana dollars improving the health centres across this region, and we spent this year alone, close to one billion Guyana dollars in every other health centre across the country, so it’s across the board, everybody getting improved health centres, now we can improve the health centre but we also have to improve the quality of service that we are delivering,” the health minister said.

The ministry has done an assessment of the needs of the health centres and has been actively working on improving conditions for patients who visit the facilities.

In addition, the number of services are expected to grow to at least 216 in two years’ time while the staff is expected to be able to competently deliver these to patients at all health centres.

Minister Anthony said the new concept the ministry is working on is to prevent the illnesses from happening in the first place, by working closely with members of the communities.

“We really want to work with you so the first thing is working with you directly so that we could improve each and every one of you, your health, but you got to do some homework in terms of what you eat how you exercise and some of those things and then we will do your part at the health center,” Dr Anthony said.

Also, with the developments in the health system, the ministry will be working to train more persons. Additionally,  the commun