– as eighth C’bean College of Surgeons conference gets underwayBy Sharmain CornetteIt was a fusion of cultural activities last evening during the opening ceremony of the Eighth Caribbean College of Surgeons conference at the Umana Yana in Kingston, Georgetown.The intriguing event was chaired by Dr Madan Rambaran, Director of Medical and Professional Services at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC) who skilfully set the stage for an interesting event which was graced with the presence of President Bharrat Jagdeo and several outstanding medical dignitaries, both locally and Caribbean based.Having wished the gathering an excellent conference, the Head of State sought to emphasise the point that Guyana’s size alone poses a challenge not just for the practice of medicine but also for almost every facet of activity.“This is one of the things that we often try to impress on people who use generalised yardsticks to measure issues in Guyana.” According to him, Guyana has for decades battled with the multilateral financial institutions which speak about the size of the country’s budget in relation to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).The President noted that the administration has had to argue that per capita cost for infrastructure is very high, not just in the health sector because of the scattered nature of the population, but in every single area.“Take for example, a water main that we have to run in Region Five that would maybe serve about 30,000 people would be enough to go around Barbados twice but you still have to do it because the water has to flow through a continuous main; therefore the cost of everything becomes magnified here.”And often is the case, the President said, that “we have lived above our means” as a country. He recounted that it was about 15 years ago when Guyana was confronted with a situation where its debt was 750 percent of its GDP and 94 percent of revenue was being used to service debt and not a mere 10 percent as is presently occurring in the United Kingdom.For this reason,
cheap jerseys, he said, the administration was forced to construct an economic policy intended to take the country forward in a realistic way.The opening ceremony in progress last evening“Our first priority was shifting the allocation from foreign affairs and the military to education and health care. But if you look at what we spend per capita-wise it is still way below the rest of the Region…We paid back US$1.5B of the debt in that period and we got about US2B written off and because of that today our debt is 40 percent of GDP and we are using four percent of revenue to service that debt.”However, in the same period, he noted, the rest of the Caribbean has gone from ratios like the one that Guyana has to a debt overhand of close to a 100 percent of GDP. He noted that most Caribbean Islands are now using an average of 60 percent of revenue to service debt, with Jamaica being the closest to 100 percent.Fortunately, today Guyana’s budgetary allocation to health is growing, the President asserted. He highlighted that the administration just recently completed the building of eight new hospitals, and over 700 students are studying medicine on scholarship abroad. And once these scholarships conclude within another three years, the public health sector will move from a mere 150 doctors to close 1,
Cheap Jerseys,000 odd doctors. In addition, he noted that efforts are being made to focus on greater distribution of drugs,
China NBA Jerseys, adding that every indigenous community has a health hut with at least one or two health workers.“Of course the standards are elementary but we can’t put a hospital in every village which has 250 to 400 people and they live 30 miles over difficult terrain from the next village…We are in radio contact with all of these villages and we medivac them out. We have 70 airstrips across Guyana to medivac complicated cases to Georgetown so that we deal with them. But it is far from perfect,
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Cheap Jerseys From China, the Ministry of Health. Guyana is the eighth territory to host the conference and according to Professor Naraynsingh there are about seven more territories yet to be visited. Con
