Taking care…of health

As a colony for hundreds of years – first the Dutch then the Brits – medical care wasn’t exactly high on their agenda for the enslaved people that literally did all the heavy lifting for them! You’d think even as a business proposition they would’ve wanted those slaves they paid good money for, to be kept fit c as long as they could. To slave away and make them rich. But the poor souls were treated like cattle and died like flies.
It wasn’t till the indentureds replaced the liberated slaves that Hospitals started to spring up on the plantations to join the two hospitals in new Amsterdam and Georgetown that catered to the elite. The Indian govt insisted!! Those hospitals helped ensure sick workers were back to the fields chop chop!! The colonial state, to its credit, did expand the hospital system so by Independence, we had cottage hospitals in most of the far-flung regions. Down in Lethem, even the Brazilians across from Boa Vista came over for medical care.
Sadly, when Burnham took over – like everything else – that medical system collapsed. Being sent the Georgetown “Big Hospital” was seen as a death sentence! It was rather ironic that Burnham passed away at the institution while on an operating table for a supposedly routine throat procedure. The Cuban doctors operating signalled the departure of the famed Guyanese doctors who’d qualified in British Medical Schools!
But thank God, whatever our gripes, gone are the days when rats nibbled away at the toes of newborns at the GHPC. However, starting from such a low base there’s still a far way to go !! But since the PPP’s stints at the helm following free and fair elections in 1992, we’ve we’ve improved by leaps and bounds!! Of great help was the medical school at UG but this wasn’t enough to staff the new hospitals built in the regions as well as the expanded GHPC. And now in their present iteration it’s clear that the PPP government is determined to bring us on par with the developed world as far as medical care is concerned.
There’s that multibillion state-of-the-art paediatric and maternal hospital at Ogle coming up and most of new Regional Hospitals at Enmore, Anna Regina, Reg 2; De Kinderen, Reg 3; Diamond, Reg 4; Bath, Reg 5 and Number 75 Village, Reg 6 are up and running!
But there’s gonna be a problem – staffing!! Cuba was very helpful both in supplying some of their doctors and training some of ours. However, with the US clamping down on that source, we will have to intensify our already launched efforts to widen our recruitment net!!
From our Cuban experience, let’s insist on English proficiency!

…of GT
With Regional and Municipal elections due this year, some feel the PPP might actually be able to grab Georgetown!! Now Georgetown’s been controlled by the PNC when there was barely a PNC!! After the PPP split for the 1957 elections and Burnham lost, the man became Mayor in 1959 – just months after he’d launched the PNC!! That’s right folks – Burnham was Mayor of Georgetown! It was an in-your-face move by him against Cheddi to mark out HIS territory! “You may rule in the sticks Buddy Boy, but I’m king in the bright lights!!”
And the political import of that boast was evident in 1962 when as Martin Carter wrote “a city of clerks became men and burnt the business district to the ground on Black Friday!! The blip in 1994 was just a pi55ing contest between Dessie and Hammie to show who was (PNC) maan!! Hammie won because he controlled the lumpen elements!!
But with WIN hiving them off the PPP can win in a three-horse race!!

…of security
Pressie stood tall in Miami with Pres Trump at the “Shield of the Americas” summit to sign a major regional security alliance aimed at eradicating drug cartels across the Western Hemisphere.
Meaning for us, zapping Venezuela’s Sindicatos!!