Bartica needs an ambulance and the hospital should be upgraded

Dear Editor,

There are a number of issues affecting the medical sector in Bartica that need to be urgently addressed. Among these is the need for an ambulance to provide a better emergency service.

Editor, I was also advised by some medical workers from the Bartica hospital that when they leave Bartica by boat with a patient because of an emergency, they sometimes have to wait for hours before an ambulance comes to transfer the patient to the Georgetown hospital from the Parika stelling.

The Bartica hospital needs to be provided with more drugs, since a lot of residents complain that when they visit the doctor or medex and are given a prescription, they sometimes have to pay for it to be filled at private pharmacies, since the hospital doesn’t have the medication  prescribed.

The hospital needs to be re-built and transformed into a state-of-the-art institution, and more doctors and nurses should be employed so that better service can be provided to this community. Over the years a number of persons have been taken to the hospital for medical attention with critical injuries, but on arrival were transferred to the Georgetown hospital because of the lack of facilities, etc, to treat them in Bartica. Residents say that it is a risk for critically injured people to be transported from Bartica to the Parika stelling by boat, since even normal people complain about the roughness of the water and the long time each trip takes.

A number of residents who have given birth say that they join the clinic at the Bartica hospital but when the time is near for the baby to be delivered they head for a private hospital in Georgetown, because of the facilities in Bartica.

However, they welcome and compliment the work being done by the medical staff in Bartica, but how can the staff function properly if the hospital needs upgrading?

I am calling on the leaders of this region to make the necessary recommendations to the Ministry of Health to deal with these issues.

Yours faithfully,
Micah Williams