Discussions between the Governments of Guyana and Austria are being finalised in relation to the construction of a much anticipated maternal and children hospital in Georgetown.
This is according to President Dr Irfaan Ali, who told reporters on the sidelines of an event on Tuesday evening that the Government of Austria, a central European nation, will be carrying out the project.
“The discussions are fairly advanced and in its final stage. We would have already moved to the award [of the contract] so it is just now finalising the final details and having the project move to implementation,” he stated.
According to the Head of State, the project is being executed with a Design, Finance, Build (DFB) model and the contract is being awarded to Austrian company, VAMED, which is a global provider for hospitals and other facilities in the healthcare sector.
Based on information on its website, the VAMED group’s international portfolio comprises the entire value chain from project development via the planning and construction of a healthcare facility, to highly specialised commercial, infrastructure, and technical services.
While there was no further information on the project details including the cost of constructing the maternal and children hospital, the Guyana Government has already set aside some $12.4 billion for the state-of-the-art paediatric and maternal hospital in Budget 2022 that is currently being scrutinised in the National Assembly.
In March 2021, Health Minister, Dr Frank Anthony had announced that Government is looking to establish a maternal and children’s hospital, which will offer specialised care to patients. At the time, it was noted that Guyana was already having talks with bilateral agencies in order to get this project off the ground.
However, last September on the sidelines of the 76th Session of the United Nations (UN) General Assembly, President Ali met with Austrian President, Alexander Van der Bellen, in New York City to discuss strengthening bilateral cooperation between the two nations.
During that meeting, the Guyanese Leader had disclosed that his Austrian counterpart had expressed interest in constructing the maternal and children’s hospital, among other things, here.
With this state-of-the-art facility here, specialisations such as children’s cardiology services that were started at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC) will be transferred to the new hospital.
Back in 2020, the Health Minister had revealed that there were significant local and foreign interest from the Private Sector in constructing speciality hospitals in Guyana.
“In terms of speciality hospital, apart from maybe Government investing, there has also been a lot of interest from the Private Sector, locally and foreign, to invest in developing specialised services. So, we are very favourable to such investments,” the Minister had said.
At one point, the Government of Guyana was in the process of constructing a speciality hospital of its own at Turkeyen, East Coast Demerara. To fund it, the former People’s Progressive Party (PPP) Administration secured a US$18 million line of credit (LOC) from the Indian Export-Import (EXIM) bank.
This hospital would have provided specialised services to Guyanese and eliminated the need for persons to travel overseas for expensive, lifesaving treatment.
Back in 2012, the contract to construct the hospital was awarded to an India-based company, Surendra Engineering Corporation Limited, but was subsequently terminated after the firm breached several of its contractual obligations. At that time, just over US$4 million of the funding was spent on preliminary works.
After the former APNU/AFC Government entered office in 2015, it proceeded to hand over the contract to Fedders Lloyd Corporation, which was subsequently blacklisted by the World Bank for unrelated procurement breaches.
With that, the speciality hospital project hit its final snag. As a result, the coalition Government used the remaining US$14 million from the LOC to fund upgrading existing regional hospitals. Those works are still ongoing.
In the meantime, at least one local company, Cardiology Services Incorporated, headed by Guyanese Cardiologist Dr Mahendra Carpen, has publicly indicated its interest in building a speciality hospital in Guyana.
However, the company was unwittingly vested with land under the former A Partnership for National Unity/Alliance For Change (APNU/AFC) Government by the National Industrial and Commercial Investments Limited (NICIL), while the Government was in a caretaker status.
With the change of Government, the company has since returned the land to ensure there is a fair and transparent land allocation process. Dr Carpen had signalled his intent to work with the current Government to bring the speciality hospital to fruition.
