The high cross-border movement between Suriname and Guyana has led to the creation of a Bi-National Commission for Collaboration on Health between the two countries.
The three-day meeting on tackling the need to ensure migrant populations in both countries are provided with adequate healthcare will wrap tomorrow with the signing of a Declaration of Cooperation by the Ministers of Health of Guyana and Suriname.
“Our concern with reaching individuals with healthcare extends to those migrants living and working in our country, many of whom are making a considerable contribution to our economy,” Dr Michel Blokland, Suriname’s Health Minister said at the first session of yesterday’s meeting at the International Conference Centre.
He noted that the Guyana-Suriname border was incredibly porous and as a result many migrant populations are undocumented. Blokland noted that data collection in both countries needed to be vastly improved.
Stabroek News asked the Suriname minister how the Bi-National Commission was to be effectively implemented if data was not readily available and he noted that the Suriname government was currently working on a databank that would be accessible by all relevant agencies in the country. “Our government doesn’t have the exact data on who is coming in and out of the country especially in the borders that we have. We are kind of opened [and] they are very difficult to control,” he noted. The Suriname minister added that in the near future they hoped the current data sourcing being conducted would be compiled.
Guyana’s Health Minister Dr Bheri Ramsaran echoed his Suriname counterpart, noting that Guyana too had to begin processes which would make the sharing of data easier. “Data is difficult to obtain, that is why we are promoting cross border cooperation in an official capacity, for example a simple exchange of vaccination information,” would greatly help in data collection, he said.
Ramsaran noted that both countries have been recognised for their abilities to conduct childhood vaccination even within the migrant population.
He said that standardisation of vaccination cards could be made possible to assist with hospital-to-hospital relationships. The minister stated that Guyana would be sending more staff to the Skeldon Hospital to assist with the number of migrant patients. He noted that Nickerie Hospital in Suriname provides health care to a large percentage of Guyanese and as a result Guyana needed to increase staff at Skeldon to “ease the burden”.
Ramsaran noted that funding for the Bi-National Commission had to be in line with each country’s national budget. He said allotments had to be made to increase the access to data while more administrative support would come from PANCAP and the German International Cooperation (GIZ), the two agencies which partnered along with the Guyana Health Ministry, Epos Health Management and PAHO in recommending that a Bi-National Commission be established.
Dr Rudolph Cummings, Caricom’s Health Programme Manager, stated that the need for such a commission would help to address migration issues. He noted that healthcare among migrant populations had to be studied and inclusive at national levels.
Dr Robert Cazal-Gamesl, Team Leader for the GZ and PANCAP initiative focusing on improving access to HIV service in mobile and migrant population across the Caribbean, stated that addressing migrants would lead to greater national and regional health services. He noted that it was not good enough to only focus on local populations as the spread of disease was more prevalent when migrant and mobile populations were marginalised.
The three-day conference will focus on providing health care in a variety of areas including HIV/AIDS and other infectious diseases such as tuberculosis and malaria. Various experts will access the current level of access to health care within both countries by migrant population and the impact on the larger society.
Cazal-Gamesl stated that this first meeting was somewhat of a trial that may eventually encompass other participants including Brazil and French Guiana.
The commission will be privy to both Suriname and Guyana’s current national strategies for non-communicable diseases and the increase of neglected tropical diseases that are on the rise due to the mobility of persons across the border.
Most recently the 16th meeting of the Monitoring Committee of the Caribbean Development and Coopera-tion Committee of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) was held in Guyana to tackle issues affecting the region such as migration and access to health services.
