It is disgusting, unhealthy and beyond disappointing that the Public Health Ministry could in this day and age be storing anything in spaces that are unsuitable and less than scrupulously well maintained. Yet, according to the 2017 Auditor General’s Report, which was recently presented to the National Assembly, this is exactly what was found in at least one off-site facility where medical supplies were being kept.
Moreover, the staff of the Auditor General’s Chambers were unable to do a stock count of the items reportedly stored in seven rooms at the Ocean View International Hotel, because of the haphazard manner in which they were placed in the room. They were, however, able to see damage to the boxes and items stored, which they attributed to termite infestation. The damage could also just have easily been caused by rodents, which incidentally, the Public Health Ministry mentioned in its response to the Auditor General. It stated that the hotel’s proprietors had treated the rooms to prevent damage to the items stored there by termites and rodents.
If this was not so serious it would certainly be laughable. But these are items — these medical supplies — that have to be used by or to treat sick people, perhaps even small children and babies. Would the average nurse or doctor be aware that the plastic-wrapped bandages, oral thermometer or gloves he or she was about to use to tend to a patient could possibly have been exposed to vermin? Perhaps after reading about it in the Auditor General’s Report. But he or she and maybe other staff as well could easily have unknowingly handled boxes and plastic covers after cockroaches and rodents had crawled all over them and then gone on to touch other surfaces in local public hospitals or to deal with patients. And that is merely one part of the problem.
There is also — and this is mind boggling — the wastefulness of sloppy storage. If it is not possible to accurately count stock, then how does the Public Health Ministry know what it has or does not have? Isn’t it likely that it may have purchased items that were already there but locked away in seven hotel rooms?
No warehouse manager or storage clerk worth his or her salt would countenance having items under his or her charge lumped together in a room when they should be on shelves or placed where they would be immediately visible and easily located by stock number and intake date. Then again, one would not imagine that a Public Health Ministry would store medical items in hotel rooms. Ludicrous right? Yet it happened and could still be happening right now because one thing that is known for sure in Guyana is that no agency follows the recommendations made by the Auditor General. The same infractions are committed year after year regardless of what the report says.
In 2008, the International Journal of Health Planning and Management published a report titled “Access to essential drugs in Guyana: a public health challenge”, based on a study conducted by the Ohio State University, the School of Public Health and Health Sciences and the Institute for Global Health both of the University of Massachusetts. It stated in part that “the supply and distribution of pharmaceuticals and medical supplies is a major bottleneck in the health care system. There are periodic shortages, delivery is often not timely, and wastage occurs because of inadequate management.” According to the report also, the Materials Management Unit of the then Ministry of Health and the public health care facilities lacked adequate infrastructure for the storage of drugs, vaccines, and other medical supplies. This section of the report was sourced back to 2004. Fourteen years later and what has successive governments done to fix this?
Well in August 2009, then Health Minister Dr Leslie Ramsammy signed a US$5 million contract with Bassoo and Sons for the construction of a modern bond at Eccles, East Bank Demerara. It was to have been completed in ten months. However, January 2013 found his replacement Dr Bheri Ramsaran explaining to the public through the Government Information Agency that there had been delays because of issues with the contractor, which occasioned the use of facilities initially provided at a cost of just over $1 million a month by the New GPC Inc. The new bond was subsequently commissioned, but storage at the New GPC Inc facility continued because it was inadequate to hold the quantum of items. In addition, the New GPC Inc was the prequalified and preferred supplier of drugs and had stopped charging the government rent in a sort of quid pro quo.
Scorn was poured on these explanations, especially by the opposition parties, which make up the current government. Soon after winning general elections in 2015, the new government put an end to the preferred drug supplier deal and removed its stock from the New GPC Inc bond as it might have been required to pay rent. But instead of moving forward it took several steps backward, renting a hastily renovated and highly unsuitable house in Charlestown, in what was clearly an underhand deal.
The axe for this travesty fell on Dr George Norton, then Public Health Minister, who had misled the National Assembly over the Charlestown ‘bond’ in 2016. He was removed to the Ministry of Social Cohesion and replaced by Ms Volda Lawrence, who had told this newspaper in June last year that government was moving away from private storage of drugs and medical supplies and would do so fully by the end of the year when it had completed extending and rehabilitating its own bonds. The seven rooms at the Ocean View Hotel were not mentioned during that interview. And while one doubts that Ms Lawrence’s head would roll over that fiasco, one sincerely hopes that by now the government’s facilities are in fact up and running.
