The Regional Chairman of Region Six David Armogan on Thursday announced that the government in collaboration with the Central Islamic Organization of Guyana (CIOG) is completing a new mortuary in the compound of the National Psychiatric Hospital.
The new mortuary is expected to come into operation sometime next month, Armogan said, while noting that some improvements are being made on the mortuary at the New Amsterdam Public Hospital. “We have a little problem with the mortuary at New Amsterdam Hospital where the hinges of the door have gone bad and we have hired someone to repair those hinges because if you go there you would find some of these doors are braced with wooden structures… The bodies that are there can get into trouble and we don’t want that to happen,” he told a press briefing.
Meanwhile, Armogan also announced that the region is moving to procure four new ambulances. The chairman confirmed that there are only two in operation within the region presently. He related, “We are supposed to have four new ambulances very shortly—it’s already on tender… So once we have these ambulances we should be able to have a better service in terms of moving patients from one place for another.”
Armogan confirmed that one ambulance will be allocated to the Black Bush Polder community, since the one which was located in the area is not presently functioning.
“We have an ambulance at Skeldon. We want to set up a pool and we are repairing two of them, so once we have a few, we want to put them into a pool at New Amsterdam so we can move them around very quickly,” he explained.
Armogan pointed out that while several ambulances are in the workshop, it is extremely expensive to repair. He noted that they are also difficult to reuse parts since the ambulances differ from each other. “They’re all different types of ambulances, so you can’t use anything from one of them so you got to bring in the parts… And so one of the ambulances to repair I saw a quotation for about $1.3 Million, it is pretty expensive to get them repaired,” he added.
Improved services
Meanwhile, Armogan also reported, that the new Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of New Amsterdam Public Hospital, Dr Bob Ramnauth, who also has oversight for the Skeldon Public Hospital, has since “identified a number of things that has to be done at both these hospitals in terms of bringing improved services to our people.”
He mentioned that the portable x-ray machines at the New Amsterdam Public Hospital are currently not working “and we are going to have to procure one quickly”, adding that they are extremely important for emergency cases when injured persons cannot be moved around.
“We are trying to procure quite a number of things that Dr. Bob has listed that is of great importance for both the maternity [and] surgery [wards] as well as impatient care, and we are working towards procuring these things so that we can improve both these hospitals,” the chairman stated.
Armogan said that on Wednesday he had an outreach in the Upper Corentyne Area where persons complained about the treatment meted out to them at the dentistry department at the Skeldon Public Hospital. “We are going to have to be able now, too, to move around doctors too to give them a chance to operate at another level and at another hospital to give them wider experience.”
He stressed that the move to move around doctors will not be to “victimise anybody” but so as to allow the doctors to have more experiences at different locations.
Meanwhile, a journalist on Thursday sought to clarify why these issues and need for improvements are now being raised by the new CEO and not previously by any other regional health official. Armogan noted that some of the issues were not raised before.
