Unbothered: public health care

Over the past few years, the number of complaints by patients and their relatives against the hospitals and health centres in Guyana, especially the Georgetown Public Hospital, has increased ten-fold. From all indications, some of the persons who are tasked with both the administration and administering of healthcare services to citizens are not taking their roles seriously. In fact, the media in Guyana have carried several reports of persons alleging negligence or other forms of malpractice on the part of health officials which have sometimes led to the death of patients.
What is even more worrying is that the subject minister and to some extent, those in charge of the administration of the health sector, seem to be unbothered by all of these reports. The Public Health Minister carries on as per normal and while she has made a few media appearances in the past to speak on some of these incidents, she has clearly not taken a proactive and hands-on approach to find real solutions to the problems facing the health sector.
This is not to say that the entire health system here is inefficient or incapable of offering top-class healthcare services to citizens, in fact, there are many health workers in the public health system, including doctors, nurses, assistants etc, who work extremely hard to care for our citizens and they must be recognised for their efforts. However, there seems to be a few who are operating with their own rules.
The administrative structures of the health services are fairly good and workable but they are not being worked by those employed to do so. Many believe that employees are allowed to be unsupervised.
In 2019, Guyana Times reported on the deaths of three children who all lost their lives after the administering of a pre-chemotherapy injection at the GPHC within a matter of days. The incident had sparked much criticism against the hospital and had brought the medical institution into the spotlight, more particularly, the conduct of its staff as it relates to providing medical care. After mounting public pressure, a probe was carried out into the matter. However, it is still not clear as to what sort of action was taken against those involved.
There were also several other cases of maternal and child deaths that were given much media publicity over the past few years and several investigations were launched to determine what contributed to these deaths. In many cases, the findings of the probes brought into question the conduct of healthcare professionals and the entire health care system as a whole but in most cases, no one is held accountable.
The bottom line is that too many of our women have lost their lives during childbirth and too many babies have died due to various complications in the very early stages of their lives. On several occasions before, we had called for the authorities to take immediate action to ensure that maternal and child death rates continue to decline steadily.
The fact is that most maternal deaths and child deaths are preventable as healthcare solutions to prevent or manage complications are well known. The WHO has underlined the fact that all women need access to antenatal care in pregnancy, skilled care during childbirth, and care and support in the weeks after childbirth. To improve maternal health, barriers that limit access to quality maternal health services must be identified and addressed at all levels of the health system.
In a general sense, providing good quality healthcare should be a key part of a country’s policies. It is therefore hoped that renewed efforts will be made by health authorities here in ensuring medical, human and financial resources are in place to improve the quality of care that currently obtains in our public healthcare sector. At the moment, it is below par.