The Minister of Health proudly escorted the Prime Minister of Jamaica, Andrew Holness, to see the tele-robotic surgery department at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC) a few days ago. The Jamaican Prime Minister got to see first-hand the rapid advances being made at the GPHC. On May 26, the doctors at GPHC, together with colleagues from India, while located at GPHC, performed the world’s longest distance (more than 20,000 km) telerobotic surgery, completing a successful open-heart surgery on a patient in a hospital in India.
The public health sector in Guyana is improving by leaps and bounds. More than 25 years ago, when I became Minister of Health, at a time when several CARICOM countries were already advanced in doing open heart surgeries, Guyana was still struggling to do basic surgeries, still struggling to even do basic laboratory testing, such as Hb testing. No one at the time could have even dreamt that today we would be leading or being one of the leaders in CARICOM in areas such as telerobotic medicine, cardiac services, neurosurgery, hip and knee replacements, and kidney and cornea transplantation.
Before the end of July, the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation will offer free MRI services for patients of the GPHC and those patients referred for MRIs by other public hospitals. Another day, another development in the health sector. Very soon a new, higher-level CT and a new CAT lab for heart patients will be commissioned. The sector is not perfect, and there are still things to be improved. But, on a daily basis, somewhere in the health sector, something new is added, something that adds a new service or that adds new technology or a new specialist area. President Irfaan Ali promised to build a world-class health sector. He is delivering on the promise.
For more than two decades, the health sector in Guyana depended on the private sector for MRI services. Our patients had to be taken from their hospital beds in the GPHC to the private sector for MRI services. In 2025, the GPHC paid more than GY$25 million for MRIs on behalf of patients. As of this month, the transportation of sick patients to the private sector for an MRI comes to an end. They will be able to get their MRIs right at the GPHC. The procurement of a new MRI for GPHC comes at a cost of about US$1.5 million. It is now the most advanced MRI in the country and one of the most advanced MRIs in CARICOM. This is a big leap into the future for the public sector, a big leap in delivering on the promise to transform the sector.
With MRIs, CTs, digital X-rays, advanced ultrasound and artificial intelligence (AI) for radiology, Guyana has rapidly become a radiology leader among developing countries. By 2030, it is expected that there will be at least five MRIs in the public sector, more than a dozen CTs, and every single X-ray machine will be digital. Every single imaging investigation will be accompanied by AI diagnostic interpretation. For a country where, even in 2000, it was rare to find even a simple computer, the sector is rapidly becoming among the health sectors in CARICOM, leading with technology transformation. Indeed, GPHC is now among the leading hospitals in CARICOM for technology utilisation.
Here is an example of the extraordinary growth taking place at the GPHC. On June 12, the GPHC achieved another major milestone in advancing surgical care in Guyana with the successful use of Cell Saver technology during a complex, life-saving vascular procedure. The Vascular Division of GPHC, in collaboration with the National Blood Transfusion Services (NBTS), successfully utilised a Cell Saver system for the first time during the emergency repair of a ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) in an 85-year-old woman.
A ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm is among the most dangerous surgical emergencies, often resulting in catastrophic internal bleeding and carrying a high risk of death if not treated immediately. The patient, therefore, required urgent surgery to repair the ruptured vessel and control the life-threatening haemorrhage. One could say it was a race against time. During the six-hour operation, the patient experienced blood loss estimated at more than four litres. To support her resuscitation, the surgical team employed the Cell Saver system, which collects blood lost during surgery, processes it, and safely returns it to the patient. In other words, the patient was receiving her own blood in real time. This significantly reduced reliance on donor blood while helping to maintain the patient’s blood volume during surgery.
The successful use of this technology marks an important advancement in blood conservation strategies at GPHC and demonstrates the hospital’s commitment to adopting modern techniques that improve patient outcomes. The GPHC and Guyana have become one of the few hospitals and one of the few developing countries in the world that now have this capability.
It is not just new things. But Guyana is improving on eliminating some old diseases. In 2022, Guyana entered a phase toward eliminating five diseases that globally have been categorised as neglected infectious diseases. Guyana established an elimination goal by 2030. The five diseases that Guyana is working to either control or eliminate are lymphatic filariasis, Chagas disease, leprosy (Hansen’s disease), cutaneous and mucocutaneous leishmaniasis (CL & MCL), and soil-transmitted helminthiasis. In 2001, we started this journey. We knew then that we could eliminate four of these diseases but that we would only be able to control leishmaniasis because the parasite reservoir exists in wild animals in the forest, a reservoir we still cannot identify. For all five diseases, within the last two years, Guyana has made significant progress and has begun to reach the elimination stage. This is one of the ways that the Guyanese people know they have a Government committed to their health and which has made health a top priority.