Eye care in Guyana will be boosted with the restoration of the Port Mourant Ophthalmology Hospital which was practically abandoned over the five years of the former administration.
During a recent visit to Region Six, Minister of Health, Dr. Frank Anthony said since taking office, government has made significant strides in getting the hospital back in operation to cater to the needs of the people.
“All the theatres were in a very poor shape. The microscope that people have to use to operate with they were in bad conditions. So, last year we spent in excess of $100 million to start, not just refurbishing the theaters, but buying the equipment,” Dr. Anthony noted.
By the first quarter of this year, most of the equipment will be in, along with the additional resources catered for in this year’s national budget.
“A lot of the ophthalmological things that people would have to go out of the region for we will be able to do it here and people from other regions would come to this region because this would be like the referral site for ophthalmology.”
Speaking of the transplant legislation which was recently passed in the National Assembly, he said while Guyana has been doing corneal transplants, the corneas were sourced from abroad, but once the hospital is fully refurbished, most of these surgeries will be done at the facility.
The government is working to set up an eye bank in Guyana, to allow persons who want to donate corneas to do so.
“We will be able to harvest those corneas and transplant it right here, so that process is going to start this year with the establishment of our own eye bank and that is going to bring a lot of relief to people who need corneal transplants, and I’m hoping that we would be able to do quite a lot of it up here,” Dr. Anthony said.
The operations at the National Ophthalmology hospital took a hiatus from cataract surgery for more than five years. However, surgeries restarted on February 13, and the hospital is now fully booked until March 10, with specialists expecting to do at least 10 surgeries per day. The hospital was commissioned in July 2009 by then President Bharrat Jagdeo, as one of the projects under the Guyana/Cuba collaboration programme.