Access to quality health care services on the East Coast of Demerara has gotten easier with the reopening of the Better Hope Health Centre on Monday.
Delivering brief remarks, Minister of Health, Dr. Frank Anthony, MP, stated that the $25 million health facility is fully equipped to service Better Hope and surrounding communities.
“We have healthcare personnel who would be working here and making sure that they deliver good quality service. So, we have already assigned a doctor who would be at this facility on a full-time basis and we also have assigned several other health care workers who would be here. We have a consultation room here for a medical doctor and a pharmacist who would be stationed here, so that all the medicines that the doctor prescribes would be dispensed right here,” he told the gathering.
The Minister highlighted that the facility is equipped to conduct minor medical procedures. He encouraged residents to utilise the facility for all their health care needs and not have the resources go to waste.
“As we open this facility, we expect that the services for this community would be improved. We expect that a lot of people here would benefit from these services, and we want the community to come out and utilise the service, don’t let this be like a white elephant. We want people to come out here and benefit from the service, all of it. And if you do that you will encourage us to constantly improve and expand.”
Minister Anthony explained that the health centre serviced hundreds of persons in the community for a number of years and was abandoned and left to deteriorate in 2017. Following meetings with the Guyana Sugar Corporation and the National Industrial and Commercial Investments Limited, the facility was officially handed over to the Ministry of Health for works to commence.
In addition to offering the usual medical services, the Health Minister announced that the health centre will be used as permanent Covid-19 vaccination site for the East Coast of Demerara.
“We have to make sure that everybody that we know that we talk to them, we encourage them to go and get vaccinated and that is why we thought that it’s important that we put a permanent vaccination site right here, so that it’s accessible to anyone on the East Coast of Demerara.”
Also present at the reopening was Minister within the Ministry of Local Government, Ananda Persaud, MP who highlighted that reopening of the health centre is yet another demonstration of the PPP/C administration’s commitment to improving health care services countrywide.
