By Royan Abrams
The provision of quality health services across the country is of utmost importance to the Ministry of Public Health and therefore all efforts are being made to ensure hospitals across the country are equipped with the much -need medical supplies to provide services needed by residents.
It is with this in mind that three weeks ago, officials from the Skeldon Hospital met with members of the US Embassy HAP team to discuss ways in which the embassy can assist the hospital so that they can enhance service delivery to patients and even persons from neighboring Suriname.
Following that discussion, the US Embassy HAP team collaborated with the Guyana Medical Relief and were able to acquire over $2M worth of medical supplies which were handed over to the Skeldon Hospital during a simple ceremony on Monday, October 17,2016.
Director of the US Embassy HAP team Stephen Stosberg noted that after realizing the hospital’s shortfall, efforts were immediately made with the Guyana Medical Relief to provide the hospital with the items needed.
“One of our main initiative with the Humanitarian Assistance Programme HAP is to increase the health capacity of course not only in region six but you know across Guyana but one of the areas we wanna reach out to is Skeldon since they are not only taking care of Guyanese but also Surinamese and I think it makes it that much more special that you guys receive that much more relief” he said.
The medical supplies comprise blood pressure monitors, underpants, Vaseline, syringes, urine kits,surgical scrubs, sponges, examination tables, sterilizing machines, among others.
Those materials were provided by the Guyana Medical Relief (GMR) and according to its Chief Operation Officer Sharir Chan, the GMR which is based in the United States has successfully sponsored and shipped medical supplies and equipment to Guyana for years at approximately US $60M worth in supplies.
Chan added that for this year alone over US $3M in medical supplies were provided to various hospitals in Guyana, “we are pleased that we are able to collaborate with our Embassy… the US Embassy here in Georgetown HAP team to assist us in spreading the donation to various communities and it is interesting that HAP has shared similar interest.”
Meanwhile, director of the Regional Health Services Jevaughn Stephen, the Regional Executive Officer REO Kim Stephen and the Mayor of Corriverton Ganesh Gangadin expressed gratitude to both organisations for their support for the enhancement of health services at the Skeldon Hospital.
The director of the regional health service disclosed that apart from the medical supplies, discussions were held with the US Embassy to conduct capacity building training with health officials in the region.
He said “we could receive any amount of drugs and medical supplies, any amount of equipment but if our staff isn’t prepared and trained properly to utilize those stuff, we will not be effective enough so following this supply of equipment HAP will provide the capacity building training.”
