Modern hospital at De Kinderen, Region Three being contemplated by Gov’t

A modern hospital is being planned by Government to be constructed at De Kinderen, Region Three to facilitate citizens living in and around the area. This disclosure was made by Health Minister, Dr. Frank Anthony during the recent commissioning of a $30M blood bank at the West Demerara Regional Hospital.

“We have to also move with the demographics because if you have a lot of people clustering in that area then we need to provide a facility that is closer to where this concentration of people is located,” Dr. Anthony said. He continued, “So, one of the things that we’ll be doing is we’ll be building a new hospital at De Kinderen, the region has already identified the land and this year in another few months we should start the construction of that hospital.”

Minister Anthony disclosed that the hospital will be equipped with approximately 75 inpatient beds, two operating theatres, one minor theatre, imaging suite (digital x-rays, ultrasound, CT scans), modern accident and emergency and outpatient departments.   Dr. Anthony noted that government is also working on having “electronic health systems”, which he said would allow healthcare facilities to move information at a faster rate and improve efficiency.

The minister revealed further that $104M was allocated to upgrade health centres in the region. “If we can’t change the culture then we have to make sure we can facilitate people when they come early, so if we don’t have an outside waiting area then we have to build that, if we don’t have sanitation facilities while people are waiting then we should build that,” Minister Anthony said while speaking about this project.  The health minister revealed that another US$1M was expended to re-engineer and upgrade the Leonora Hospital, this is part of the “Smart Healthcare Facilities in the Caribbean” project that is being funded by the United Kingdom Department for International Development.

Dr. Anthony gave the assurance to health workers that the government will continue investing in the sector, while urging them to care for the facilities and work towards improving the quality of health services in the region. Meanwhile, he said that the construction of a new hospital in the compound of the West Demerara Regional hospital is part of government’s manifesto promise to provide improved infrastructure and improve the quality of healthcare services in all administrative regions across Guyana.

“The intention is that because a lot of this is very old … we can’t utilise it as effectively as we would like to and therefore what we want to do is to build a completely new hospital that would be modern, and it would have a lot of equipment, but the negotiations for that is still ongoing and we haven’t finalised that as yet, so once we do that you would have a new hospital being built in this compound,” Dr. Anthony explained. Minister Anthony added that the project is currently in the design phase, however he noted that monies have also been allocated to upgrade other sections of the hospital.