Region Six health facilities to tackle gaps in service
DPI, Guyana, Friday, September 14, 2018
As the Ministry of Public Health wraps up plans for the 2019 budget, Minister of Public Health Volda Lawrence and Director of Regional Clinical Services, Dr, Kay Shako have visited health facilities in New Amsterdam to address the gaps that exist in the health care system.
On September 12 and 13 numerous nurses and doctors were engaged with the Minister and Dr. Shako along with others from the public health administration to highlight their concerns and areas which require immediate intervention.
Minister Lawrence and her team also toured health facilities in New Amsterdam including the Regional Hospital, the National Psychiatric Hospital and the new Amsterdam Health Centre.
New Amsterdam is the hub for health service delivery in Region Six as services are filtered through other health posts, centres and other hospitals.
Minister Lawrence explained that this visit to the region was “to ensure that as we plan now, as we plan ahead for more years to come we want to ensure that we capture all of those areas where the gaps are and deficiencies exist, to ensure that the vision is one which makes provision for far-flung areas.”
Lawrence was informed through public information and social media there was a need for a review of the way services are delivered at the regional hospital.
As these gaps and deficiencies were assessed the minister and her team cited the need to address the issues of management. Moving forward the ministry continues to implement training and capacity building programmes to address this.
Also, these programmes will address the gap in human resources. “At the New Amsterdam Hospital, the greater of the issues is that of human resources and that spreads across the regions so I am very happy that our training programmes are seeking to meet those gaps which we have,” Minister Lawrence added.
Moving forward, the ministry team and the Ministry of Communities along with the regional administration for health will all meet to resolve gaps related to human resources.
Further, other areas regarding infrastructure, medical supplies and equipment and other areas of concern have been considered by the minister as “low hanging fruit” and she said the hospitals’ management will work closely to ensure that there are evident changes and improvement in services and working conditions.
“Certainly, I will be meeting with the region and the Ministry of Communities to address the many vacancies we have, and most of those vacancies are in the area of management and supervision and as a result of that we have a lot of disparities in terms of persons’ working ability and their performance level.”
Delicia Haynes
Images: Karime Peters