Health Ministry to address shortfalls in disease, outbreak surveillance

Guyana’s current status in disease surveillance will get an overhaul, as authorities converge to gauge and fix the deficiencies in the current system.
Health Minister, Dr Frank Anthony revealed on Monday that the National Health Surveillance Symposium, slated for November 22 to 24, 2022 at the Pegasus Hotel will provide the opportunity to do so.
Profiles, especially in the area of infectious diseases, will be ventilated to determine the country’s data collection pace and ability to make detections.
“What we are going to meet to discuss whether the current system that we have in place, whether it is able to collect the data that we need to do disease management especially in the area of infectious diseases; and whether the system is flexible enough to be able to detect in a timely manner, outbreaks and diseases,” he communicated.
The Health Minister noted that these efforts are geared at improving the overall surveillance system, straight up to the national level. Work has been ongoing in the area of COVID-19 but he added that other diseases cannot be ignored.
“We have an existing surveillance system that starts from the health post, health centre, regions, then the data is fed up to the national level. While we have been able to work to expand the system during COVID to make sure we’re tracking cases and other parameters, we cannot ignore other infectious diseases such as malaria, HIV, TB and so forth.”
Meanwhile, Dr Anthony explained that tracking non-communicable diseases and properly aggregating this data is needed.
He said, “The second area we want to look at is in the area of surveillance for non-communicable diseases. These diseases include hypertension, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and so forth. We do collect data but sometimes it’s not properly aggregated. Therefore, we’re going to examine that to see how we can improve the systems to make sure that we have timely and more accurate data.”
The Minister said Guyana will track different types of cancers by building a surveillance system to collect this information.
It was highlighted this week that a unit has been formed at the Health Ministry to conduct rapid response in the wake of any potential outbreaks. Should any situation arise, the team can be dispatched to examine symptoms, epidemiology, and make conclusions on how to respond.
The Health Ministry has also been working with several multilateral institutions in relation to pandemic preparedness, including having discussions with PAHO/WHO to strengthen existing systems. (G12)