Consultations to develop more updated and futuristic health laws got underway at Duke Lodge on Wednesday as Guyana prepares to reform its public health laws to bring them in line with international standards.
Health Minister, Dr Frank Anthony with participants at the consultations
The country’s current Public Health Law has been in existence since 1934, and is considered outdated.
Speaking at the consultations, Health Minister, Dr Frank Anthony noted the importance of having this piece of legislation modernised.
“The world has evolved and we have better understanding of many of these diseases, we have better ways of treating them and, therefore, we must apply these modern techniques for us to make sure that we’re all in sync with the science that we have before us. And that’s very important, so we have legislation that is really outdated and we need this legislation to function in a modern world, so we have to update it,” he said.
However, this will not be the only act to be updated in the coming years according to Dr Anthony, who related that they have now embarked on a process to update all outdated or inefficient health-affiliated legislation.
These laws, the Minister said, will not only be updated to include the knowledge and technologies in today’s world but will also be more focused on human rights.
“It’s not only the gap with dealing with disease but also with rights, because people’s context of patient rights back then was totally different from patient rights today,” he explained.
“…look at mental health, for example; the legislation contemplated that mental health patients were a danger to the society and, therefore, you needed to put laws in place that protect the society and basically you disenfranchise the patients….and a lot of people ended up in institutional isolation where they should [not] have necessarily been in the first place, because they needed treatment and care and they could have gotten that from the community or closer to home.”
“But when you review the legislations, a lot of the legislations are like this and that is what we are attempting to fix today,” he explained.
To update these laws, Minister Anthony stated that they have been looking at international best practices and better legislation from around the world.
“We are not coming with any preconceived notion that this is how it must be, we are borrowing from best practices from around the world and in areas where there are better legislation, more updated legislation in the Caribbean and in the Commonwealth, we’re looking at those, but we have to devise legislation that are going to suit our unique situations,” Dr Anthony stressed.
“So, while we might be able to look at practices that other countries have and how they would have addressed particular challenges, we also have to tailor that or customise it to suit our unique needs.”
Meanwhile, the Minister stated that updating the health legislation would have some effect on other sectors in Guyana that also have outdated legislation.
“In this part, particular piece of legislation, it is really a cross-cutting piece of legislation that would have impact on almost every sector in our country and, therefore, what we are trying to do is to have different chapters that address some of these things and modernise our legislation to meet the needs. I suspect the outdated legislations that we have in health, we also have some of that type of legislation in the other sectors, so as we do this one for health…it would also be very keen to have your participation and make sure that we’re able to get the nuances from your sector adequately address [ed] … with this piece of legislation,” he added.
