Planned surgeries to resume at GPHC – Dr. Anthony
The Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC) will soon resume surgeries which were postponed due to Covid.
Minister of Health, Hon. Dr. Frank Anthony handed down these instructions to the new Board since most of the Covid patients have been transferred to the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention at Liliendaal.
“Now that we have moved most of our COVID-19 patients across to the Ocean View facility, we have now been able to free up Georgetown Hospital to be able to return back to some sense of normalcy. One of the immediate things that the Board has been tasked with is to ensure that we resume planned surgery because we have a backlog that goes back from since March,” he revealed during Wednesday’s COVID-19 update.
Dr. Anthony said he was pleased that patients who have been on the long waiting lists will finally get their procedures done.
He added that the use of the antigen tests would help the hospital return to some normalcy quicker.
“We will be able to hospitalise patients and have faster turnaround because we are now using the antigen test, so rather than people waiting in these transition wards for long periods on a PCR result, we can check their COVID-19 status by using antigen tests, and if we’re not certain, then we do the PCR. But the antigen tests would help us to screen a lot of patients and get them into the hospital and be able to do surgery as quickly as possible.”
Additionally, GPHC has repurposed its outpatient areas to encourage social distancing. It has also been outfitted with sinks and sanitisation units to help curb transmission of the disease.
The Minister also said he expects to see outpatients attending clinics regularly now that the Covid patients have been transferred.
“The number of people coming into the clinics has dropped, so we have to make sure that those persons who normally attend those clinics, especially people with chronic non-communicable diseases are receiving treatment because their conditions need to be properly managed. These are the people who would be at higher risk for COVID-19.”
The new GPHC Board was appointed on Monday with effect from December 1, 2020, until November 30, 2021. Dr. Madan Rambarran was appointed Chairman and Director of the Dr. Yesu Persaud Clinical Education Centre.