The Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) of the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation has been refurbished with the aid of a Canada-based charitable organisation to enhance the care for premature babies.
Dr Narendra Singh, head of ‘Guyana Help the Kids,’ noted that the acquisition of new equipment, which cost in excess of Cdn$100,000, moves the Georgetown Hospital NICU to a grade three status and means more can now be done to help premature babies. “Today is a historic day, because this is defined as a level three neonatal intensive care unit. By that, I mean what we can do now what we’ve never been able to do before at the Georgetown Hospital. We can now provide respiratory support for premature babies which we were not able to do before. We are now giving babies a real fighting chance to save their lives and can significantly improve the mortality in doing so,” he said.
Singh is also the hospital’s principal partner for the development of the Masters in Paediatrics Programme that is currently in its fifth month, with five residents enrolled.
The charity is also mobilising funding for the NICU training programme for nurses who are due to graduate next year.
Yesterday, at the opening of the unit, Singh explained that part of his organisation’s mandate is to do fundraising activities which will allow for the purchase of specialised paediatric equipment. “So, as you look around you’ll see monitors, incubators and some other sophisticated pieces of equipment that were donated by our organisation… we are quite proud of that,” he said.
The completion of the refurbishment project, he added, was as a result of a huge effort by a number of people and groups.
Dr Singh noted that premature babies in Guyana are relatively common, giving an estimate of about 14,000 to15,000 births a year. In Region Four, he added, there are about 7,500 births and at Georgetown Hospital specifically, there are about 6,000 births per year.
He indicated that with developing a protocol and putting measures in place a few months ago to control infections in the unit, they have been able to reduce mortality by 50% and the group is very proud of the effort.
“Our occupancy in the NICU is about 15 to 20, sometimes more than that and sometimes more than half of which are premature babies. Now, we are able to optimally care for them with the equipment we have and with the skills we are imparting to the doctors and nurses,” he stated.
The funding for the infrastructure was contributed by the government of Guyana and the Georgetown Hospital while the funding for the equipment was mainly from the organisation, though personal donations were made.
Contributions to such a project are also made in different forms, Singh explained, noting that several volunteers assist in offering their time and services.
“Volunteers come, pay their own airfares, [and] spend about two to three weeks here to train our physicians to become excellent paediatricians. So, as an organisation we should be thankful for these volunteers for their effort,” he said.
Singh said that at the beginning of the programme, tremendous focus was placed on the residency part but this paved the way for development in other areas. “I realised that we couldn’t train the doctors and not give them the equipment. So, we decided ok, we’ll give the equipment. And then I realized, well we can’t train the doctors and give them the equipment, we also now have to train the nurses. So, now we are embarking on the nurses’ training programme. The next question after this is well when we are finished with the Georgetown Hospital, where do we go from here?”
Dr Singh said that though the facility at the hospital is not similar to the one he works at in Toronto, similar care can now be provided with improved monitoring capabilities and respiratory support equipment.
Additionally, it was revealed that the organisation is working towards having the unit fully ventilated within a few months. He added that with the help of hospitals’ Chief Executive Officer Michael Khan, he hopes to have that project completed shortly.
Furthermore, Singh noted that in May of this year, the organisation is due to launch a new one-year neonatal nursing programme in collaboration with a group in Columbus, Ohio. They are prepared to admit eight nursing students to that programme.
Among the visitors yesterday was Ryan Hinds, a Guyanese who migrated to Canada at the age of nine.
According to Singh, the athlete, who plays defensive back for the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, heard of the project and decided to volunteer his time to visit and evaluate before returning to the Canadian Football League and other contacts to assist with fundraising for the paediatric ward.
Present at yesterday’s event too was First Lady Deolatchmee Ramotar, who helped unveil the plaque to herald the opening of the reconditioned NICU. She said she was very pleased at the unit’s enhancement. Mrs Ramotar served at the hospital as a nurse and later a midwife. She noted that she worked at the hospital from 1970 to 1983, in a brief comment to the media.
