Tapping into private health sector to boost COVID-19 testing is needed – Dr Anthony

Former shadow Public Health Minister, Dr Frank Anthony is calling for Government to tap into the resources of the private health sector to boost its testing capacity for COVID-19.
“We need the Private Sector to come on board and they need the Ministry to allow them – giving them the permission to go ahead so that they can add to the testing capacity of the country,” he posited.

Dr Anthony is one of the key stakeholders in the National COVID-19 Response Forum that was established by the Opposition People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) to aid in the fight against the spread of the novel coronavirus.
The Ministry had recently stated that efforts were being made to have the necessary lab equipment available in order to increase the number of tests being done.
However, Dr Anthony explained that many of the private hospitals and laboratories here in Guyana have the human capacity as well as the equipment readily available, as such, they just need to get the supplies in order to conduct tests for COVID-19 themselves.
According to Dr Anthony, currently, if any of these private health institutions need a test conducted then they first have to seek permission from the Public Health Ministry, and some of these requests have been denied.

“So we have one public health lab that is supposed to be doing all the tests for the country and they’re not able to cope, and they get all kinds of restrictions. But here is it, the private hospitals and laboratories can do these tests and they’re not giving these people permission to do the tests. So something is wrong with that,” the former shadow Health Minister contended.
He went on to further lament the fact that private health institutions do not readily have access to COVID-19 test kits.
Dr Anthony stressed that these private hospitals must be able to get testing for the deadly virus done immediately since delays with this can endanger the lives of not just the patients but the medical professionals as well.
“So that’s another bottleneck… either they have to send the patient to testing site at the Georgetown Public Hospital or if that person is hospitalised then they need to get permission from the Ministry to get a test kit, that is, a swab to collect samples from the patients,” he noted.
But even this process has more bureaucracies, the former shadow Health Minister stated. He revealed that when samples, even those from public hospitals, are sent to the State lab for testing, then a request first has to be made to the Public Health Minister’s office and only when permission is granted then the test is conducted.
Already, controversy has been raised over the fact that the results of all COVID-19 tests first goes to caretaker Public Health Minister Volda Lawrence before anyone else, including the doctors who requested the tests.
To end this, Dr Anthony asserted that the private institutions have to face more bureaucracies.
“So for the private hospitals to get the swab and the medium [to] conduct the test they have to make a special request to the Ministry. But all of that will take substantial time – this could be hours or days for them to even get permission to get the kit to collect the samples. So there’s a big delay here especially a lot more for the private hospitals,” he contended.
According to Dr Anthony, in both the public and private health sectors, people are not getting access to COVID-19 testing readily.
In its updates on Friday, the Ministry disclosed that a total of 83 tests were conducted. As of Saturday, Guyana’s number of confirmed cases of the coronavirus was at 24 with the number of deaths still four.
Guyana had its testing capacity increased to 1800 after a donation of some 1100 test kits from PAHO/WHO.