Persons training to fix medical equipment under new biomedical programme

…to be employed full-time at facilities

Sparking career opportunities under its newly-launched Biomedical Programme, the Health Ministry has embarked on a quest to ensure that machines and other equipment at facilities are maintained and functioning to serve the public.
The Biomedical Programme is a collaborative effort between the Health Ministry, Public Service Ministry and Medical Aid International, where individuals were drawn from all across the country to be trained and later placed as full-time employees at health facilities.
At the launch on Friday, Health Minister, Dr Frank Anthony shared that there are many instances where pieces of equipment are broken and there is significant downtime. Persons from the coastland would have to be dispatched to get them up and running again. This will now be rectified.
“When the instruments go down, there is nobody to fix them and that has become a really big problem for us. When we have a few people in Georgetown, if something goes wrong in one of the regions, you have to wait until somebody get out into the region to help fix some of these things. It doesn’t take hours. It would take weeks and months for somebody to be able to get out there.”
He added, “We want to change that. That is why when we were selecting people, we ensured that in every region of Guyana, we have people. In this first cohort of students, we have identified people in all of the major hospitals.”
With new facilities being built, they should be manned properly, the Health Minister noted. In the past, heavy emphasis was placed in having adequate human resources to handle patients but having realised the importance of biomedical technicians and engineers, the focus has been expanded.

He shared that least one person should be present in every health facility but more importantly, the Ministry is carving out a career path which persons can build on. Some of these individuals are already employed by the Ministry.
Dr Anthony announced, “Once you are here and you’ve passed the course, there is a full-time job with the Ministry.”
Programme Director of Medical Aid International, Tim Beacon shared that this is a start which can lead to major outcomes in the health structure here in Guyana.
“With this programme, which is very well proven, we are privileged to be running this programme. This is just the start of what will become a major driver in developing structure in this area.”
Advisor to the Health Minister, Dr Leslie Ramsammy said the biomedical landscape is changing in Guyana. Without technology, he added, the quality of healthcare desired cannot be achieved.
Ramsammy shared that these investments are in keeping with the intention of making Guyana a leader in the health sector within the Caribbean Community (Caricom).
“We can’t provide the high quality of care that we’re talking about unless we have our biomedical engineers. There was a time when we ran this sector with just people and their knowledge. We had very few pieces of equipment. That is changing in Guyana. (G12)