Rehabilitation Department at Suddie hospital is poorly equipped

Dear Editor,

According to a June 22 KN report, 7% of the population is living with disabilities. The Ministry of Health is observing Rehabilitation Week 2009, and is currently involved with the Disability Commission and the Ministry of Labour, Human Services and Social Security in establishing the size of the disability population in Guyana.

Injuries can incapacitate workers to the extent that they can no longer perform the work they did prior to the accident, and the workplace will have no records. Another dimension of the problem is that an unknown number of workers are sent off the job medically unfit at relatively young ages. What is tragic about these cases, is that due to the high incidence of labour mobility, it is often difficult to determine the correct size of the population living with disabilities.

What amazes me, though, is that nothing seems to have been done to improve the Physiotherapy and Rehabilitation Department at the Suddie Public Hospital.

The government has spent millions of dollars to rebuild this hospital, but this department is poorly equipped with no professional physiotherapists, and the waiting time is very stressful for people in wheelchairs. We all pay our income taxes and now VAT, so that money collected can buy modern machines, proper beds and a bigger rehabilitation room for the disabled at Suddie. Editor, it just takes basic common sense to administer this department since it is a matter of people’s life and health. Why can’t the health committee make recommendations on these matters which are important for the patients?

Yours faithfully,
Mohamed Khan