Health Minister Dr. Frank Anthony has been given clear instructions by President Dr Irfaan Ali to recruit nurses and medical professionals from any part of the world, as part of the government’s efforts to ensure there is adequate staff for the 12 new hospitals currently under construction across the country.
Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo recently reiterated this directive during his weekly press conference.
Jagdeo explained that the government’s expansive health infrastructure plan includes the construction of 12 hospitals, six of which are expected to be completed and launched before the end of this year. He stated that the move is necessary to ensure quality health care is delivered once the new facilities come online.
He noted that the government has embarked on rehabilitating health facilities as well as building modern structures. “So even if we don’t put down a new one, we’re modernizing the others. We now have a plan…we’re going to launch these six new hospitals before the end of the year…you’re going to have six new hospitals with CT scans,” he said.
He noted that with such upgrades, there will be a higher demand for skilled medical personnel, including technicians to operate advanced equipment such as CT scanners. The Vice President estimated that 18 to 20 technicians will be required for this function alone, and while training is ongoing, it may not be sufficient to meet demand.
Notably, he made it clear that if there are not enough nurses or technicians locally, then Guyana will look abroad. “That’s not the way you work. You have to build it and work at fixing the personnel problem, and you have to fix the management problem. We already know many of the hospitals are not properly managed… so the management support will come from Mount Sinai, Northwell,” he explained.
“The president has said clearly to Minister Anthony, recruit from any part of the world. We want when these hospitals come into operation, that our people can walk in and get the best service it would have…this is not PPP or APNU or AFC. We don’t do a litmus test, who goes to our hospitals,” he said.
Jagdeo added, “We want them to get the best quality.”
Moreover, earlier this year Jagdeo had hinted at the government’s willingness to aggressively recruit overseas nurses to bridge the country’s growing human resource gap in the health sector.
At that time, when asked about the country’s ongoing loss of trained nurses to overseas opportunities, he noted, “The same way our nurses are being stolen, I think we may have to do some of this policy ourselves. You have some registered nurses around the world, that’s how we may be able to recruit too, at pretty competitive rates. Nearly competitive with what we pay a nurse now here and we have to explore all sorts of things to keep our hospitals going.”
Since then he had disclosed that government would have to recruit health professionals to ensure its hospitals are adequately staffed.
