Guyana recruiting global healthcare workers to staff expanding health sector – VP

Despite major government investments to expand Guyana’s healthcare workforce, Vice President Dr Bharrat Jagdeo on Monday acknowledged that the country continues to grapple with a shortage of healthcare workers to supply Guyana rapidly expanding health sector, with the government moving to “recruiting from around the world” to fill positions across the hospital system.
VP Jagdeo spoke on the issue as he spoke with journalists on the sideline of a Public Day outreach at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre.
“We’re struggling to complete the hospitals, to find staff… we’re recruiting aggressively so that all the new hospitals we’re building can get the highest level of service. We don’t have enough people in Guyana, enough staff, and we’re recruiting from around the world to make sure until we can train our own people so that they can adequately staff these hospitals,” the Vice President said.
Historically, Guyana has grappled continuously with the migration of trained nurses, technicians, and specialist healthcare workers. Guyana has been building and commissioning a network of modern regional hospitals, over the past few years, in a push to reduce dependence on Georgetown and decentralize healthcare access.
Major hospitals being built include the new No. 75 Regional Hospital in Berbice, which was commissioned in 2025; as well as new and refurbished hospitals in Lethem, Bartica, West Demerara, Moruca, New Amsterdam, and Kato; the expansion and modernization of the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC); and the Pediatric and Maternity Hospital being built in Cummings Lodge.
To increase the human resource the government has invested in the construction of two new nursing schools in Suddie (Region Two) and New Amsterdam (Region Six). This has seen intake in Guyana’s nursing programme increasing to 2,100 students, with about 650 expected graduates by the end of 2026 from some of the newer programmes alone.
However, the government estimates that Guyana still needs several thousand additional nurses over the next decade because of the opening of the new hospitals, the expanded healthcare coverage, the migration of healthcare workers abroad and population growth linked to the oil economy.
Over the years, President Dr Irfaan Ali has spoken at length about his administration’s plans to use Guyana’s oil revenues to build out and modernize health services, as the government positions Guyana competitively on a global level.
Since 2020, Guyana’s health sector has gone through one of the fastest periods of expansion and modernization in the country’s history. The focus on infrastructure build out marks a major shift towards decentralisation, away from the previous situation where specialized healthcare was concentrated almost entirely in Georgetown.