Guyana Ministry of Health, PAHO host Strategic Directions for Human Resources for Health Expansion

Georgetown, Guyana: The Ministry of Health (MOH), in collaboration with the Pan American Health Organisation/World Health Organisation (PAHO/WHO), hosted a one-day workshop on the Strategic Directions for Human Resources for Health Expansion at the Guyana Marriot Hotel in Kingston, Georgetown on July 12, 2023 (Wednesday).

As per the update, with the expansion of services within the Health sector in Guyana, human resources are much needed to provide effective and efficient health services across the board. As such, the workshop will focus on ways in which the MOH and PAHO can strengthen Human Resources capacity and be readily prepared for the transformation of the health system.

Following this, the Ministry mentioned that while delivering his remarks on the expansion of the Health System in Guyana, Minister of Health Dr Frank Anthony stated that due to the post-pandemic, most developing countries have been faced with the migration of Nurses and skilled or technical workers within the Health System.

“The health sector right now, like many countries in the Caribbean and maybe most developing countries, is experiencing a great challenge with the migration of nurses and technical persons in the Health sector moving to more developed countries. This has been made more acute because of post-COVID, which caused health workers in developing countries to feel burnt out. Many of them have left their jobs, and therefore have left a big vacuum in the health system of many of these developed countries. The easiest way for them to address some of these concerns is really to pull from developing countries,” Dr Anthony stated, according to the update.

Further, he added that it’s more difficult to retain persons within our country since developed countries are offering better salaries and incentives.

The social media update by the Ministry of Health stated that Minister Anthony said that with the help of a Consultant from PAHO, the Ministry was able to implement a comprehensive package of services to be delivered at the Primary Health care level. With this, he stated that approximately 216 interventions should be offered at the primary level, which will have a mixture of preventative measures and management of infectious and non-communicable diseases.

Meanwhile, the Director of Health Systems and Services at PAHO, Dr James Fitzgerald, indicated that while rebuilding the health workforce and working on a transformation within the health sector, a few policies were identified for immediate focus. These include governance, regulation of professional practice and education; capacity development; working conditions that will retain people in the workforce, among others.

Among those present at the workshop were Chief Medical Officer (CMO) Dr Narine Singh; Hinterland Coordinator Micheal Gouveia; PAHO Representative Dr Luis Codina; Advisor Health Systems and Services PAHO, Daniel Albrecht; the Directors of various programmes within the MOH, and Regional Health Officers (RHOs).