By Isanella Patior
Isanella@newsroom.gy
The Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC) is making significant strides in healthcare with several groundbreaking surgeries, marking firsts in Guyana’s medical history.
Director of Medical Services, Dr. Navindranauth Rambarran, during an interview with the News Room on Friday, stated that these are not one-off surgeries but part of a sustainable effort to raise the country’s healthcare standards and build centres of excellence in clinical care.
Among the historic surgeries, GPHC performed its first breast reconstruction following a mastectomy; completed the first removal of a ‘human tail’ on a child born with the congenital condition; the first pediatric liver resection and the first resection of the liver for metastatic cancer.
Medical team during a recent surgical procedure at GPHC
Dr. Rambarran highlighted that these are just the beginning to achieving sustainable successes in clinical care.
“What I want to emphasise is that these are firsts but they are not one offs, what we are trying to do in all of these cases is building success in all of these surgeries in a sustainable manner to the population,” Dr. Rambarran said.
The hospital has also introduced a sustainable cleft lip and palate repair programme through Smile Train, and resumed pediatric cardiac surgeries. Additionally, the hospital has introduced endoscopic kidney stone removal eliminating the need for invasive abdominal surgery.
GPHC now also offers bariatric surgery as part of a clinic for obese patients, has expanded its transplant surgery programme, and introduced vascular surgeries for aneurysms.
“Transplant surgeries is another area in which we have moved from just sporadic cases in the mid-2000s and we now have a programme that boost of the best transplant per million persons in the region. Previously if persons had it [an aneurysm] was either a death sentence or you had to find a pathway out of the country for those persons to get surgery,” Dr. Rambarran explained.
Director of Medical Services at GPHC, Dr. Navindranauth Rambarran (Photo: News Room/September 2024)
The hospital has also implemented laparoscopic surgery with ICT technology to enhance the outcome of complex operations.
“This is where florescent technology lights up the vessels and drainage within the areas such as the liver making surgery complex surgeries more safer and feasible for certain conditions.”
Other advancements include new visual field testing in ophthalmology, a new pathology lab, with plans to introduce telepathology for consultation with overseas partners on difficult cases.
Medical team during a recent surgical procedure at GPHC
“I believe that what we are on the path of doing is building centres of excellence in clinical care and it is not just surgery there is other non-surgical areas in which we have built capacity and doing work very successfully, comparatively to the rest of the region,” Dr. Rambarran said.
Many of these surgeries have been made possible through local expertise and partnerships with international organisations like World Paediatric Partners, Gift of Life, and Operation Walk.
“I think overall the public’s confidence in GPHC has grown and we see it. We see the clientele, the patients coming in they are across the demographic with regards to persons, the places they come from, social backgrounds and so on,” he stated.
In the future, GPHC plans to further consolidate its advancement in healthcare and expand the services offered.
“The healthcare system is being expanded in an exponential way so we will have first example a level five hospital in New Amsterdam and we will have a specialist maternity and child hospital in Ogle,” Dr. Rambarran said.
One of the big factors, he added in the improvement of specialist services at the hospital is attributed to the continuous training of its human resources.
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