US$1.8M Global Fund support to enhance Guyana’s intensive care capacity

Guyana has been granted US$1.8 million in support from the Global Fund, which will be used to bolster the intensive care capacity across regional hospitals to adequately manage patients.
Health Minister, Dr Frank Anthony announced during Thursday’s coronavirus briefing that there was a window for countries to benefit from COVID-19 funding to reinforce their response to the pandemic. Guyana had applied to the Global Fund and was recently shortlisted to receive the grant.
“We started that application about a month ago and we’ve put it in. As of two days ago, Guyana has been successful. They have written to us, acknowledging that our proposal has been successful. They’ll be funding us for the things that we requested … We’re expecting about US$1.8 million over the next couple of months to do these activities.”
Through this mechanism, the funds will be directed towards boosting the Intensive Care Units (ICUs) in regional hospitals for management of severely-ill patients. Dr Anthony added that this sum should be released to the Health Ministry in the near future, and would be expended following protocols established by the Global Fund.
“With this particular request, one of the things that we have asked the Global Fund for is resources to ensure that at all of our regional hospitals, we enhance our ICU capability. This fund would assist us in adding ICU type of beds. It would also assist us in procuring monitors and ventilators and create a space in each one of the regional hospitals so that we can manage patients with severe COVID.”
Over at the Infectious Diseases Hospital at Liliendaal, Greater Georgetown, the ICU bed capacity was recently increased from 25 to 35 in order to cater for surges.
“We have seen at times when you can have surges of patients and perhaps, you need to make sure that you have extra capacity if you have those surges. We have added that capacity to our ICU at the COVID hospital and so we have expanded it to about 35 beds now. We have that extra capacity and I’m hopeful that we don’t have to use it, but if we need to put persons on ventilators and so forth, we now have that extra capacity,” the Minister outlined.
In the past, the Global Fund had provided resources for HIV, tuberculosis and malaria. Funding was also opened to cater for COVID-19 assistance – from which Guyana had already benefited from last year.
Just last week, the World Bank also approved US$6 million in additional financing for the Guyana COVID-19 Emergency Response Project to support affordable and equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines and ensure effective vaccine deployment.
The original project was approved in November 2020 to support Guyana’s pandemic response and strengthen the country’s health system. Already, the country has received US$7.5 million from the World Bank to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic.
Of this additional financing approved by the World Bank, US$5 million comes from the International Development Association (IDA). Guyana receives interest-free financing from IDA, with a maturity of 40 years, including a grace period of 10 years. Meanwhile, the remaining US$1 million is a grant from the Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Multi-Donor Trust Fund. (G12)