Regional Health Services Director, Dr. Kay Shako has zero sympathy or tolerance for Regional Health Officers (RHOs) who are in the habit of dropping the ball. The Director expressed this sentiment during a recent lecture on the poor behavior being exhibited by some RHOs.
Noting that theft still continues in the healthcare system, Dr. Shako added some other factors that further underscore the call for RHOs to do better. In this regard, she stressed that “the piles of expired drugs” in the healthcare system is because of poor forecasting by RHOs.
She also threatened firm disciplinary measures against some RHOs who are “unnecessarily” absent from duty. She also chastised some RHOs who are inelegantly dressed for work, and those who smoke and/or are drunk on the job.
In addition to this, Dr. Shako expressed disappointment in the fact that some RHOs allow some health programmes to collapse completely under their watch while others are on the verge of “fragmenting”. She even chided them for allowing public health facilities to operate without proper licensing while adding that by Friday, all RHOs will be expected to complete the necessary documents to ensure the illegality ends forthwith.
She called on officers in the health care system to “stop the madness.”
Minister of Communities, Mr. Ronald Bulkan lauded Dr. Shako for her frank discourse.
“I congratulate her for her frankness and her forthright delivery…because too often in discourses of this nature we tend to gloss over the inadequacies and the deficiencies in the system and to embellish so even though she did highlight the many successes she was not shy of addressing the defects where they are,” Bulkan said.
Dr. Shako’s comments would come days after the Pharmacy Director of the Ministry of Health, Oneil Atkins, said that officials in Guyana’s pharmaceutical sector “still” struggle to forecast accurately, patients’ needs in the 10 Administrative Regions.
Atkins pointed out that quantification is a tedious task and demands “highly specialized skills”. He said that the ability to forecast helps improve estimating the right pharmaceuticals, in the right quantities for a specific procurement period, in a timely and accurate manner.
