The government is currently working on programmes that would provide spectacles and hearing aids free of cost, as required by students this year.
This was announced by Health Advisor Dr Leslie Ramsammy during the launch of the Lesser Antilles Medical Assistance Team’s operations in Guyana on Wednesday.
According to Ramsammy, the government has recognised that many children have been put at a disadvantage in the learning sector due to audio and visual problems.
“We have made a promise that every child in school — 208,000 children — will benefit from vision screening, and all the children that need glasses will be provided with their glasses free of charge. We have made a commitment that every child will have screening for hearing, so that anyone that needs aid to hear…we want to correct that. Not sometime in the future, but in 2023,” Dr Ramsammy announced.
Additionally, he shared that very soon the health sector would see a tremendous upgrade, given that it would now be able to conduct sequencing to determine variants of the COVID-19 virus and other diseases.
“In a few days, Guyana will be able to do our first sequencing to determine variants for COVID-19, for malaria, etc.…We’re talking about sequencing, we’re talking about DNA work…it is a far way that we have come,” he declared.
