At a media sensitization session held at the Georgetown Public Hospital on Friday, Head of the Accident and Emergency (A&E) Unit, Dr. Zulfikar Bux urged the media to tell both sides of a story when issues arise at the public health institution.
He noted that relatives of patients would sometimes “run to the media” with their side of the story and that would be reported in the press without the Hospital being given an opportunity to reply.
He lamented that sometimes journalists write articles without even considering the doctors’ side of the story and stressed the importance of cooperation between the media and the medical fraternity.
Dr. Bux pointed out that the Georgetown Hospital A&E unit is a hotspot as it’s Guyana’s only referral and specialized A&E unit, he noted that on average 150-250 patients are tended to on a daily basis. Of that number there are often emergency cases and a large percentage of that number would die without any medical intervention.
The A&E Head said that since 2010, they have managed to decrease the number of complaints and the mortality rate due to mismanagement at the GPHC A&E unit while improving health care.
He also announced that while they have already started specialist training for doctors at the A&E, training for nurses is also scheduled to begin.
The issue of overcrowding was also addressed while it was revealed that relatives of patients sometimes leave them in the wards for days, sometimes weeks after they would have been discharged, thus leading to overcrowding and other persons not being able to access beds.
Dr. Lucio Pedro, Consultant in the Gynaecology department of GPHC spoke about maternal deaths and noted that most times those deaths are no fault of doctors, but are due to other factors, the most common being older women developing complications.
He noted that as humans get older, Hypertension (High Blood Pressure) is common, another factor he noted is that sometimes pregnant women are rushed from the hinterland and due to the terrain at times, more often than not, by the time they arrive at GPHC they are dead.
Yet another issue is mothers that do not seek medical attention until it is too late, he gave an example of one mother who died recently while being rushed to the hospital, she was seen walking around the hospital compound the day prior to her death, he advised that pregnant women seek medical attention at all times.
Pedro stressed that there is no country in the world that has zero maternal deaths.
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