The Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) and the Mayor and City Council (M&CC) will collaborate on a joint venture to improve the facilities at the Festival City Health Centre.
According to a press release from the Department of Public Information (DPI), Minister within the Ministry of Public Health, Dr. Karen Cummings on Wednesday led a team from MoPH and M&CC on a visit to the Health Centre. Members of the team included District Health Officer Dr. Danelle Drepaul, Chief Health Visitor (Georgetown) Medex Beres Springer, city and public health engineers and other representatives from M&CC.
“We would like it [Festival City Health Centre] to come on par with some of our facilities that we have at the Ministry of Public Health, so we are prepared to partner with the City Council to ensure that we deliver quality care to the residents of south Georgetown,” Dr Cummings was quoted in the press release, as saying. Dr. Cummings had earlier met with Town Clerk Royston King who had expressed an interest in contributing to a better health care delivery system to the citizens of Georgetown.
According to the DPI statement, the issue of flooding at the Health Centre will be addressed by two engineers from the two entities, “so the mothers don’t have to skip and jump when they are coming to the clinic, and also we are going to cater for the disabled,” the minister was quoted, as saying. She added that there may be plans to extend the clinic in order to house more staff and equipment and offer extensive services to residents in the area, so that it could be a stop gap from persons going directly to the Georgetown Public Hospital.
“This is a large community. We want to introduce, on a daily basis, a kind of outpatient service where we do chronic illnesses dressing and so forth… making it a one-stop shop where you can come and see a doctor get your medication and have everything done. At the same time, we are easing the load… so that the Georgetown Hospital can tend to more emergencies, as they should,” Medex Springer was quoted in the DPI release, as saying.
The Health Centre currently offers Maternal and Child Health services which includes prenatal, antenatal and postnatal care along with family planning, counselling and testing services from Tuesdays to Thursdays. Services for chronic disease patients are also facilitated on Mondays and Fridays, according to the DPI statement.
