Work underway to boost services at Bartica hospital

Steps are being taken to advance upgrades at the Bartica Regional Hospital, which would enhance the services there and allow it to become a more patient-friendly facility.

Region Seven Regional Executive Officer (REO), Mr. Kerwin Ward told DPI in a recent interview that this initiative is in keeping with the Government’s efforts to ensure health services offered countrywide are at a high standard.

“For the last couple of months, we have more specialists being dispatched to the Region and so with this in mind we have to upgrade our health facilities so that they can properly function. Better services are being offered at the hospital where all of its departments are upgraded and more equipment are being placed,” he said.

Mr. Ward said the Administration’s 2021 work programme will also include the construction of a maternal and child health clinic and living quarters at the hospital.

In 2020, the Bartica hospital’s Accident and Emergency Unit underwent works valued $5.6 million and became fully equipped to deliver 24-hour service as opposed to its previous eight hours per day schedule.  The former one-bed unit was upgraded to accommodate four beds, and featured a separate area for quarantine and monitoring of special patients who might have ingested poison.  The outpatient, pharmacy and paediatric spaces were also refurbished, and the computerised tomography (CT) scan was operationalised last year.

Moving forward, the REO said, he hopes that a radiologist and a psychiatrist are sent to serve the facility soon. This service would also be provided to residents in riverine areas during outreaches.

Additionally, an extension would be built at the Kamarang District Hospital, which would help reduce the number of referrals to the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC).

A US$17.5 million line of credit had been signed with the Export-Import (EXIM) Bank of India in 2017 to upgrade and modernise the Suddie Public, West Demerara Regional and the Bartica District hospitals.

The Ministry of Health will invest about $1.2 billion (US$6 million) to advance infrastructural works at the Suddie hospital, almost $1.6 billion (US$8 million) to upgrade West Demerara Regional Hospital and $600 million (US$3 million) to upgrade the Bartica hospital.