Born and raised in Guyana, and coming back every year as a visitor since 1968, I assumed I knew the country well. I was familiar with the swings of the independence years, and then I was living here again from 2008. So when, just a few months ago, I heard talk about a state-of-the-art heart care unit at the Georgetown Public Hospital ago, I was sceptical. How come I had never heard of it? It is truly an amazing story that there is indeed a facility of such standard here, treating hundreds of patients, free of charge, and it is so little known. That is something we certainly need to be shouting about, and so I’m making my own noise on the subject today, passing on to you some of what I’ve learned in the past couple of months.
The story of this remarkable Cardiac Intensive Care Unit (CICU) in Guyana begins in Calgary, Alberta, Canada when Dr Debra Isaac, Cardiologist and Professor of Medicine at the University of Calgary, was approached by a Guyanese colleague, Dr Kishan Narine, to donate some equipment to help diagnose heart disease at Georgetown Public Hospital.
