New Minister of Public Health Dr. George Norton says he plans focus on reducing the maternal mortality rate, the suicide rate and ensuring much needed training for staff in the health care sector as well as the availability of medical supplies.
“Our health system is in crisis,” Norton told Stabroek News in an interview on Thursday at his Brickdam office. “It’s going to take a very, very great effort on the part of the new government to correct that situation,” he added.
The former Ministry of Heath has been renamed the Ministry of Public Health under the new APNU+AFC government and Norton
explained that the change was necessary because the portfolio entails more than medicine.
“It includes some amount of hygiene, epidemiology and environmental issues along with health care,” he said.
Norton noted that while he appreciates some of the efforts that have been previously made to improve the public health sector, he felt they were not adequate because there has not been a holistic approach.
At this stage, Norton said, the country does not need a specialty hospital; instead, it needs improved public health facilities. “Why a specialty hospital when we can improve the GPHC [Georgetown Public Hospital Corpora-tion]? This is what we need to do, we need an improvement of our public health facilities. It’s not only GPHC. We need to improve our health centers and health huts around the country,” he added.
To illustrate the need, Norton cited cases where nurses from hinterland locations have been brought to Georgetown for training only to be asked at the conclusion to return and work in facilities which are literally crumbling and with none of the necessary equipment or medicines to provide proper service.
‘A different approach’
Norton also said the rates of maternal and infant deaths as well as suicide in Guyana are simply too high and attempting to lower these numbers will be a priority for him.
The high incidence of maternal and infant deaths in some cases is linked to negligence due to poor work ethic and little job satisfaction, he believes. “Whether it is proven or just an allegation, there is a lot of negligence. This is closely related to work ethics… We need personnel with a different approach, we need personnel who are adequately trained, [and] we need a change in attitude towards the whole area of infant and maternal health care,” Norton asserted.
He assured those families who have lost members in maternal and infant deaths, several of whom are still demanding answers from the health administration, that he and his team will be more responsive to their request for information and transparency in their methods of investigation and discipline. “Persons must and will be held accountable if found accountable,” he said.
In fact, Norton promised to resign if under his tenure there is a preventable death which his ministry fails to investigate, report on and deliver reprimand in a timely manner. “I will walk,” Norton assured. “I have seen it happen in other countries for less reason. Ministers have got to start taking responsibility. We have to stop putting the blame on other people if we expect the public to have confidence in us,” he added.
He added that adequately addressing this issue will require that several other priority areas are addressed. Those areas are the provision of adequate training at every level as well as the provision of adequate infrastructure and remuneration so that workers can provide the best care and “curb the scourge of negligence.”
Although the Ministry does not hold sole responsibility for the prevention of suicide, it has a pivotal role to play in its prevention, he also observed. Guyana was listed in a global study last year as having the world’s highest suicide rate.
Meanwhile, Norton said that under his tenure there will be no reinventing of the wheel. Instead, he said there will be continuous building on what already exists. Training, he noted, is essential to the provision of proper health care and it is in recognition of this fact that he will be addressing the training of healthcare staff at every level, from specialist to technicians inclusive of nurses, midwives and emergency technicians for the ambulance service. This training, he further emphasised, will be continuous. “All doctors will tell you that no matter how well they did in their undergraduate studies, when they finish is when they realise that they know no medicine and they must practice in order to learn. So, we need to improve the Faculty of Health Sciences [at the University of Guyana], we need to have more equipment and more cadavers so that our students can practice,” Norton said.
A large number of local doctors have received training in Cuba. “Cuba has an excellent health system,” Norton said, when asked to give his opinion about the level of training the local doctors have received. “Its system is amply geared to Cuba, which has all the infrastructure and appropriate registries, with documents, the particulars of every patient in the system. It is difficult to ask someone trained in that system to function appropriately in a system such as Guyana’s, which lacks much of what they were exposed to in their training,” he added, while pointing out that there is an interdependence in the health sector, which requires every section to be optimal for best results.
‘We can’t have one drug supplier’
Norton also stressed that he will be addressing the inadequate availability of medicine in the public health system. Noting that often there seems to be a lack of sufficient medication and that often when these are available they are expired, Norton said this must change. He bemoaned the fact that the government was recently forced to discard $280 million dollars in drugs because they were expired. This first step in changing this, he said, is in changing the way that the government goes about sourcing drugs.
“We can’t have one company responsible for providing over 80% of our pharmaceutical needs. We need to introduce other companies into the bidding process, make it more competitive so the people of Guyana will be better served. There will be no Cabinet order granting one company sole right,” he said.
Contracts awarded to the sector’s current largest supplier, the New GPC, have been the source of controversy for the last decade because many were single-sourced. Last year, the company was selected as the only pre-qualified bidder in a new system that was challenged by analysts as unfair. New GPC had been favoured with many controversial contracts under the tenure of former President Bharrat Jagdeo and this continued under the Donald Ramotar administration. New GPC is owned by Jagdeo’s friend, Bobby Ramroop.
