The Ministry of Health notes with alarming concern the statement recently made by the President of the Amerindian Peoples’ Association, Mr Lemmel Thomas, at the recently concluded United Nations meeting.
The Health Ministry viewed the statement as most unfortunate, disinformation, misleading and disappointing.
Mr Thomas is aware and has ready access to information from the Ministry of Health, which will prove that the Government of Guyana has made significant strides and progress in improving health for all persons in Guyana, including its First People, the indigenous population.
One of the most recent efforts by the Government to further modernise the health care system in the hinterland was actually prevented by Mr Thomas and his agency, the Amerindian Peoples Association, who discouraged the community leadership of Kanarang, Upper Mazaruni, from approving to construct a modern hospital in the community, which would have taken access to specialised surgical and specialist care, reducing referral of indigenous patients to the city of Georgetown, creating at least four hundred additional jobs for young Amerindian youths, and improving patients’ outcomes.
That stalled project would have required community participation and materials from the communities, which would have generated much-needed revenue, and would have improved the livelihood of the Amerindian people in the upper Mazaruni region.
Here is an overview of the current healthcare system in the indigenous communities. In 2010, a sub-programme was created within the Ministry to coordinate health in the hinterland regions, which are predominantly inhabited by the country’s indigenous population.
There are a total of 106 Amerindian villages, 64 satellite communities and several Community Development Councils, and the Ministry has a health facility in each Amerindian village and satellite community. These health facilities are staffed and managed by residents of the villages and are supported by other skilled personnel from the coastland, where applicable.
From 2020 to 2026, the Ministry of Health has retrofitted, renovated and modernised all 172 of its existing health facilities across the regions, including those in the hinterland regions. Investment in infrastructure upgrades in the hinterland regions alone was done at an approximate cost of GY$21,210,754,476.
Several facilities were upgraded from Level Two to Level Three, while others were upgraded from Level One to Level Two.
There are currently four modern Laval 4 facilities being constructed in Regions Two, Seven, Eight, and Nine. While the Government looks at other options to build a similar facility in the upper Mazaruni district. An initiative in which the Amerindian Peoples Association discouraged the community from approving the land for construction. Stalling the entire process and depriving the Amerindian communities in that area of access to higher-level health care.
Guyana shares borders with Suriname to the east, Venezuela to the west, and Brazil to the south, and we do provide border/frontline health services to all nationals without exception.
Over the past five years, the Ministry has intensified community participation by decentralising its training programme to attract more indigenous persons (especially youths) to participate in the delivery of healthcare to their communities. This strategy provides a better opportunity for indigenous people to participate in managing health in the hinterland, creating more space for a greater number of persons to be trained at any given time and reducing the need for indigenous youths to leave their homes to travel to the city of Georgetown to acquire a health education, while providing a fully paid scholarship to each person in any of the training programmes, along with a stipend and a guaranteed opportunity of employment upon the successful completion of the programme.
A total of 840 persons trained over the past five years, from Regions One, Seven, Eight, and Nine, have been deployed to their respective regions and are serving the people of their communities. Speaking their native language where applicable, reintegrating with their community without any difficulty, and the Ministry are satisfied that they continue to learn on the job, through the process of continuing medical education, and as seen on the table above, there has been an increasing number of persons being trained each year, and this trend will continue.
There are also efforts being made to have indigenous people trained at the level of medical doctors, and doctors who would have been serving well are also allowed to specialise and return to their respective regions to serve subsequently.
In 2026, there will be an additional 434 persons enrolled in various programmes and deployed to their respective regions upon the successful completion of their courses.
The Ministry has introduced telemedicine in the hinterland regions. From December 2022 to date, the Ministry has installed 130 telemedicine systems in indigenous community health facilities, bridging the gap in access to specialised consultation and general care. Through this medium, patients also have access to telepsychology and psychosocial support services.
The Ministry is also initiating the process to further expand the telemedicine access to the hinterland communities/indigenous communities to an additional 100 sites. If we do a simple comparison between the number of health facilities in Amerindian communities and the number of telemedicine sites after the installation in 2026, it tells a clear story of the status of access to health care by the Amerindian community in Guyana.
This will set Guyana apart as the leader in improving access to health care through telemedicine in this part of the world. This technology is predominantly available to Amerindian staff in remote communities, who provide health care for their people.
Guyana’s health care system has a clearly defined hierarchical model of health care delivery. It consists of five levels, with One being the lowest level at which comprehensive primary care is delivered and Five being the highest level where tertiary health care is delivered.
Because of the closeness of the state of Roraima in Brazil to some of our border areas and the interrelationship of families on both sides of the border, between Guyana and Brazil, some patients will choose to ask for a referral to Brazil instead of being referred to our premier health facility, the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation.
Notwithstanding that fact, when time is of the essence, the hospital in Lethem, Region Nine, will refer a patient to Brazil for a higher than a Level Four type of care, such as a CT scan, an MRI, or a neurosurgeon consultation or intervention. Once time permits and a patient is not critical, the system would refer that patient to Georgetown.
Guyana has a medical evacuation programme which is accessible to all patients in the hinterland. Once the medical personnel have determined that a patient is critical and needs a specialised intervention to save that life, a request is made through the established health system, and the Ministry of Health would charter and dispatch an aircraft along with appropriate medical personnel/teams to extract that patient. This is a programme specifically designed to help patients in the hinterland regions. At no time does any patient in need of specialised care, even in an emergency, have to travel over any border or walk for miles without being able to access care or get a referral to higher care.
The Ministry has an annual allocation of GY$220,000,000 to support Amerindian emergency evacuation services.
The Government of Guyana will continue to engage in consultation with our Amerindian communities in relation to all projects and initiatives to benefit the people of Guyana, and especially those being designed for Amerindian population benefit.