Guyana’s preparation, surveillance for future pandemics significantly improved – Anthony

– details plan for over US$20M in World Bank/WHO funding

Having gone through the COVID-19 pandemic a few years ago, Guyana has significantly improved its monitoring capabilities for any future epidemics and pandemics, with almost 24 laboratories around the country that have had their capacity boosted, and improvements planned for Guyana to monitor its animal population in case of a virus being transmitted to humans.
This is according to Minister of Health Dr. Frank Anthony, during day four of the examination of the budget estimates on Wednesday.
During the session, former Minister of Health Dr. Karen Cummings questioned how the ministry has improved its monitoring capabilities for outbreaks of diseases such as SARS, dengue or H1NI (swine flu).
“Right now, in our systems, we’re quite prepared to be able to respond to outbreaks or any epidemics. We have, over the last couple of years, made substantial investments in our laboratories. In the public sector we have close to 24 laboratories and we have equipped most of them to be able, not only to do rapid tests, but to be able to do PCR tests and so forth,” he replied.
“So, each region would have its own capacity and also, what would happen is when they send samples to us at the National Public Health Reference lab, we’d be able to run those samples in a timely manner,” the Health Minister added.
Dr. Anthony also revealed that they are now able to do molecular surveillance, something that the government previously had to rely on foreign assistance to do.
He assured that over the next three years, capacity will be built in the system to be able to do molecular surveillance for most infectious diseases.
“We currently have, and I don’t think this is well known, the capabilities of doing sequencing for COVID-19 viruses. So, when they circulate, we can actually sequence and tell you what sub-type. And that’s a capacity we didn’t have, and we had to send to other laboratories.”
Meanwhile, an update was also provided by Dr. Anthony on the request they had made to the Pandemic Fund, which is the production of a collaboration between the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Bank.
“Last year we put in a request for funding from the pandemic fund and we were successful. So, we received US$15 Million in grant funding, to help Guyana prepare for future pandemics… $15 Million will be spent on upgrading our current laboratories, putting in a system for transport and also to have an inter-connected, electronic laboratory system.”
“We also have another US$5 Million, approximately, that would be spent on getting people trained and getting additional human resources for our laboratories. And we’ve also put US$5 Million of that grant fund, to be able to build a more robust surveillance system. Moving from one which is paper based, to one which is more electronic.”
Additionally, the Minister noted that the government is working to boost its pandemic surveillance of not only the human population, but also of the animals. In this regard, he noted that they are collaborating with the Ministry of Agriculture.
“We’re also building a system in place in collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture, to do surveillance in the animal population. Because when viruses jump from animals to humans, we must be able to have the capability to detect these viruses.”
“We’re also building an environmental surveillance component. So, when you combine human, animal health and environment health, this is what is described as a One Health approach. And in the next three years, this is what you’ll see built out, with the pandemic fund resources and an additional US$7 Million we’ll be getting from the world bank.”