Dear Editor,
I refer to a recent letter written by Mr Hydar Ally who extols Guyana as a model country when it comes to human development (SN, July 7). Specifically, Mr Ally praises free education in Guyana, applauds the primary health delivery system and singles out the exceptional work done by the PPP/C government which made this possible for all Guyanese. So confident is he of his understanding of these issues and the wonderful performance by the PPP/C government, he launches into an injudicious analysis which finds fault with the USA and European health care systems. He criticizes these countries for the lack of access to health care for its citizens and laments the notion that charitable health care providers have to step in to fill some of the health care needs in a system where the demand outstrips the supply, leaving many underserved.
Given what Mr Ally has written, I think he may have been misguided on a number of issues. First, many Guyanese both young and old seek medical attention overseas as critical health services are not available in Guyana. Some go to neighbouring countries in the Caribbean, including Trinidad and Tobago, and Barbados, while others travel to the USA and as far as India for medical attention. Second, political leaders, including the late President Cheddi Jagan and Dr Leslie Ramsammy, among others, sought and received medical attention in the USA. Third, there is the praiseworthy work undertaken by the former first lady, Varshnie Singh, who assisted children in accessing health care in India under her charity, ‘Kids First Fund.’ Fourth, there are Guyanese medical personnel who come home along with their colleagues and friends to render health care services on a voluntary basis to underserved Guyanese; and last but by no means least there is the health care programme between the Government of Guyana and the USA. Mr Ally needs to take these private and public programmes into consideration before submitting to the press his misperceptions on health care access and health care service availability in Guyana and other countries.
On a much broader scale, Mr Ally needs to examine some of the statistics published on Guyana by reputable international agencies, I present some of this information here, showing a comparison between countries in the Caribbean and Guyana.
On the subject of life expectancy, the typical Guyanese lives an average of 69.8 years, which is below the average of nine selected Caricom countries; the average is 73.6 years for Barbados, Bahamas, Jamaica, St Lucia, Dominica, Belize, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana. In relation to infant mortality, the average for the nine countries is 19.1 infant mortalities per thousand births; the figure in Guyana is 34.5 infant mortalities per thousand births, which is more than three times higher than what obtains in Barbados. More troubling for Guyana is the high rate of suicide relative to what is observed in the other Caricom countries. Ranking fifty different causes of death in each country, suicide is the fifth highest cause of death in Guyana. In the Bahamas and Barbados, the suicide rate is ranked at 50 and 41, respectively, signalling that suicide is not as prevalent in these two countries as it is in Guyana. One implication of the high suicide rate coupled with a high migration rate, especially of the tertiary trained, is that many Guyanese may not be enjoying the high human development that Mr Ally describes, given that many are ‘voting with their feet’ or self-selecting to commit suicide.
On the subject of per capita income, the Bahamas has the highest level at US$87.00 per day/per capita, with Guyana trailing at US$19.00 per day/per capita, the lowest among the nine countries. Combining the per capita income with suicides in the nine countries, we obtain a useful measure of human wellbeing. Not surprisingly, countries with high per capita income per day tend to have low suicide rates, while countries with a low income per capita per day tend to have high suicide rates. In this regard, the Bahamas which has the highest per capita income per day has the lowest suicide levels relative to Guyana which is at the bottom of the scale with low income and high suicide rates. Incidentally, Berbice and GuySuCo in Berbice present a unique laboratory of suicides coupled with people ‘voting with their feet,’ as income and employment decline due to an unprofitable and poorly managed sugar industry that has been politicized instead of being professionalized by the PPP/C government.
Mr Ally mentioned that Guyana is more functionally literate than at any time in our history, but this can be questioned as well, albeit anecdotally, until some evidence is compiled. So consider this situation. I spoke recently with a retired teacher who told me that one of the reasons she became a teacher was because when she was a teenager in Essequibo she saw people who could not read and write and she made it her duty to get involved. She became a trained teacher along with others and made a positive transformation in many lives at home and overseas.
On a recent visit home, she was standing in line in the bank to conduct her business and in the queue in front of her was a young man who could only sign with an X and the teller had to have another staff member verify the transaction. The teacher said she was horrified by what she saw and heard that day in the bank, as this was a traumatic scene from her past, one that she felt she would never see again in her lifetime.
Addressing functional literacy is not an easy assignment, but what I would strongly recommend is that bank tellers should conduct a survey to measure how many of these events take place on a daily basis and they publish their findings. This will give us a first insight on what could be a serious problem that will take generations to correct.
Finally, Mr Ally concludes with the notion that Guyana is regarded by the international community as a model county when it comes to human development. Editor, I leave it to your readers to make their own judgment, for they know ‘bun thread’ when they see it.
Yours faithfully,
C Kenrick Hunte