Dear Editor,
An evaluation of emergency care in Anna Regina for decades now would lead to the conclusion that there had been no recognizable health policy and programme in place for emergency cases for the outlying areas.
A successful health-care institution should now open at Anna Regina since Suddie and Charity public hospitals are miles away, and the population has increased tenfold with several new housing schemes, including those at Mainstay, Red Rock, Lima Sands and Tapakuma. When the PPP/C took over the reins of government there were overcrowded, insecure hospitals in Region 2 and Guyana. These conditions applied not only to poor but also wealthy patients.
All of this went on although an ambitious health programme was enunciated in which Essequibians were publicly assured that Anna Regina would have a hospital. In fact the National Health Plan of 1992 had little or no impact on the health situation in Region 2. The low level of political commitment to the health situation here on the Essequibo Coast was exemplified by a virtual reversal of policy, and the downgrading of Essequibians from being integral to development to mere recipients of welfare.
I have always been concerned about the many foreign physicians and local doctors who have found profitable sanctuary in our public hospitals. The culture of private profiteering has destroyed our Guyana and continues to extinguish its residual morality.
It was the dream of Essequibians that the government would provide comprehensive facilities for health-care to patients. The opportunity to provide better health-care to the common man and woman by establishing a hospital at this township has been lost. It is my hope that President Bharrat Jagdeo will read this letter and act on this issue of another hospital urgently.
Yours faithfully,
Mohamed Khan
