Charity hospital’s dental department in deplorable state

Residents living in the north of Region Two (Pomeroon-Supenaam), particularly in the Pomeroon areas, continue to face tremendous economic hardship accessing public oral health services owing to the condition of the Charity Oscar Joseph Hospital’s dental department, which is currently out of operation.
The department’s unsanitary conditions have forced staff to send patients to Suddie and Anna Regina dental departments.

Residents related that they have to travel long hours and when they reach Suddie, they were often sent away.
“When we reach Suddie, we are told that they already reached the amount of patients for the day and as such, we have to come back, I travelled from as far as Wakapao in the Pomeroon River to do an extraction and that is what I was told,” a resident told Guyana Times.
Other residents related that they have to incur additional expenses to venture to the Anna Regina Health Centre to access dental services. This poses an extra burden on persons’ pocketbooks.
In March 2017, the Charity Oscar Joseph Hospital’s dental department was closed as a result of bat and ant infestations. The matter was discussed at the last statutory meeting of the Regional Democratic Council (RDC) in detail.
Head of the Region Two RDC, Devanand Ramdatt said he was not aware that Suddie’s dental department has a “cut off” on the numbers of persons it treated, but he would investigate.
Ramdatt said he was, however, concerned about the way a particular contractor was carrying out his job at the Charity facility. He noted that a contract was awarded for works to be done at Suddie and Charity hospitals, but the contractor was moving at a snail’s pace. Ramdatt further said on account of the slothfulness of the contractor, the dental department at the Charity hospital remained out of operation. He stated that the works at the hospitals needed to be sped up so that services could be made available to the people. (Indrawattie Natram)