Dear Editor,
I, like the rest of Guyana I hope, am alarmed by the number of newborn deaths at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GHPC) for the year 2107 and the past decade, as reported in your newspaper of 13th July 2018 article entitled “119 newborn deaths in last year at GPHC”.
More alarming, the Ministry of Public Health seems to have not done any analysis of the statistics. Even if we were to accept the Minister of Public Health’s contention that the hospital receives the sickest of the infants in Guyana (which is not an acceptable argument or analysis) the question remains what is causing the babies to be sick in the first instance? Without the proper analysis, how is the Ministry addressing the issue? I think public responsibility and accountability requires that the MoPH completes and presents to the public the findings of a complete analysis. Since we seem to like Commissions of Inquiry, let us have one on newborn deaths.
It is often said that a society can be judged on how it treats its elderly and infants. We are obviously not doing very well.
Yours faithfully,
(Name and address supplied)
