Six months after she travelled to the National Ophthalmology Hospital in Port Mourant to have what she thought was simple cataract surgery done, a sixty year old woman is still suffering the consequences of that surgery and said she would not wish the experience on her worst enemy.
“When they were doing the surgery I was in intense pain, I felt everything and it was like my whole eyeball was catching afire, and coming home in the bus I was groaning and in pain. I was screaming in pain the whole night until next morning,” the woman told the Sunday Stabroek in a recent interview.
She detailed the experience of having two corrective surgeries performed subsequently on her left eye and it was only recently she started to see properly out of that eye and no longer has to use the many eye drops that were prescribed her over the months.
The woman, who preferred to remain anonymous, said against her better judgment she travelled to the “state of the art hospital to have what was supposed to be a lil minor surgery, just to clean the eye.”
And according to her she has met persons at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC) and a private hospital where she had corrective surgeries done who have all experienced problems after having surgery at Port Maurant.
When contacted, Minister of Health Dr Bheri Ramsarran said the ministry has had no complaints of persons having to have corrective surgeries undertaken after being operated on at Port Mourant hospital, which was opened in 2009 and is staffed by Cuban specialists.
However, ophthalmologist and head of the ophthalmology department at the GPHC, Dr George Norton, said he has seen patients who had to be operated on after having surgeries done at Port Mourant.
“I have seen patients who had what I might describe as an ordinary cataract surgery done at that Port Mourant eye hospital, who came to see me and needed corrective surgery. I am not saying you can’t have complications from any surgery… but the kind of complications I saw seems to me that it was human error,” Dr Norton told this newspaper.
He said the incidence is recent, but it has happened on more than one occasion, although since he is not the only ophthalmologist around he cannot speak for the others.
“They have come into my office and like they came into my office they could have gone to other offices as well,” he said, adding that because the GPHC always has a long waiting-list persons would go to private institutions to have the corrective surgeries done.
But Minister Ramsarran maintained the ministry has not received any such report and he suggested to this reporter that if there were indeed such reports then the information should be shared with the ministry.
“I have not heard that; I am not saying it doesn’t exist, but I have not heard that and I manage Mission Miracle [where Guyanese go to Cuba to have surgeries done] and Port Mourant very closely, but it is good to hear these things from the public, especially from Port Maurant because we think they are doing a very good job,” the minister said.
Told that at least one patient had indicated that they had approached the ministry for assistance to go overseas for corrective surgery, the minister questioned whether it was because they had the surgery done at Port Mourant or “because something more needed to be done.”
He said there is need to ascertain whether it was an additional disease or indeed a complication, and if the latter, then the reason needs to be established.
‘Black-out’
For the sixty-year-old the trip went horribly wrong from the time she arrived at the hospital at around 7am along with others only to find that the building had black-out which lasted for eight hours, and the hospital had no fuel for the generator ‒ or at least that is what they were told.
“So you are sitting there for eight hours and remember you could not eat since from the night before, and so you sitting hungry and when they done they just give you a lil cold food,” the woman related.
Following the surgery she was given two pain tablets and told not to take anything else so she rolled in pain the entire night before travelling to the Diamond Hospital the following morning where she was scheduled to see a doctor.
“I was still in severe pain and right away after I reach the doctor saw me and give me an injection and clean the eye but I was still in pain,” she said.
She visited the doctor twice between October and December and was due to see him again in December but when she arrived for a scheduled visit she was told that he had gone back to Cuba for the holidays and that she could either go to the GPHC or visit a private institution. And she was not the only person, as she recalled a man had travelled all the way from Essequibo and was given the same message.
Over two months after the surgery she was still living on painkillers because of the pain and she had blurred vision in the eye, but on December 23, 2012 things took a turn for the worse when the eye started “to run water and became red.” It was then she visited a private doctor and she was given eye drops before being referred to the GPHC where doctors told her that there was a swelling in the eye and that she needed urgent surgery to have it remedied.
This was done and the woman said she was okay, but when she returned two days later for follow-up treatment she was told that she needed further surgery and that this may have to be done overseas as there was no equipment at the GPHC to do the surgery she needed.
“They told me that after they removed the lens… they may have used some gel or something but whatever they use some remained and when they put [in]… the [new] lens it got stuck and it had to be removed and cleaned,” the woman said.
After hearing she had to go overseas the woman said she was encouraged to approach the ministry for assistance, and while she was told that she may get some of the money to pay for the surgery officials there told her she needed to return to Port Mourant to have an evaluation and for a determination to be made as to whether the surgery can be done.
“When I heard that I say no way, I am not going back to that place and I decided to just go private and have it done.” She said this was done last month and she now has 80% of her vision back in the eye.
“I am speaking out; I have been going to Georgetown hospital and at the private hospital and people have been telling me they having problems after going to Port Mourant and had to do corrective surgery.
I am so disappointed and I want to know what happen to the people who can’t afford to have corrective surgeries,” she said.
Displaying over 30 bottles of eye drops the woman related how she spent thousands of dollars to purchase them over the last six months.
“For the last six months I have lived a reclusive life, I only left my house to go to the doctor. I had no Christmas or anything, I had to black out my bedroom because the light hurt the eye and day and night I had to wear shades,” the woman related.
Port Mourant hospital
Meanwhile, Dr Norton, who has been working as an eye specialist at the GPHC for twenty-five years, said he finds it strange that he has never been invited to the Port Mourant hospital and as such he does not know what services they are providing, although he has been told that it is staffed entirely by Cubans.
“I would have been happy that with all the expertise they have there and with all the equipment, by now we would have had Guyanese doctors working alongside the Cubans for about four or five years, and by now it would have so much easier for them to complete post-graduate studies,” Dr Norton stated.
Asked if he had raised the issues with the Health Ministry, Dr Norton responded that for the last three years he has raised the issue of no Guyanese being exposed to the expertise at Port Mourant in his budget presentations.
“Unless somebody is into the area, the chances of them developing an interest to do post-graduate training would be slim. If you want to become an ophthalmologist, you have to be placed in that department… and your interest will never wane and that has not happened,” he commented.
He said he has not raised the issue of corrective surgeries with Minister Ramsarran because the hospital is his “pet and he goes out at length to praise it, and it is not so comfortable for me, whether it is constructive or not, to go saying any criticisms of the hospital.”
But Minister Ramsaran said the hospital is staffed by Guyanese but the specialists are all Cuban, and that some Guyanese are being trained to become specialists. He said at least two Guyanese are currently overseas being trained in ophthalmology, and there is a doctor from Linden who just returned as an ophthalmologist and is working in the mining town.
He said when the two return they would be in the system. However, he pointed out that for the longest while the specialists at the hospital have been Cuban as training an ophthalmologist takes three to five years, although it is hoped that eventually Guyanese would take over.
“We didn’t have enough graduate doctors to create post-grad doctors, but we have that now; this year we are having another 278 coming back, giving me the possibility of [having more doctors training to become specialised],” the minister said.
