A new report has found that a dearth of operational planning has negatively impacted the ability of the Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) over the last 50 years to continuously provide comprehensive care and may have also led to unnecessary spending.
This is according to the Pan American Health Organisation\World Health Organisation (PAHO\ WHO) report on the progress of health from 1966 to 2016 in Guyana. The Health @ 50: Progress Health Report 1966-2016 notes that the development of strategic plans, which is one of the core functions of the MoPH, has on many occasions been driven by donor requirement to access funding.
According to the report, documents, such as National Health Plans as well as National Strategic Plans for specific diseases, outline the broad strategies to assist the MoPH to achieve its goals. It added that the operationalisation of these strategies necessitate short (1-3 years), focused and target driven