Guyana opens new hospital to serve East Bank corridor

Pres­i­dent Ir­faan Ali says the open­ing of the new mul­ti-mil­lion Di­a­mond Re­gion­al Hos­pi­tal, will pro­vide health care ser­vices for more than 40,000 peo­ple along the East Bank cor­ri­dor.

“This is an in­vest­ment that will en­sure our women, chil­dren, el­der­ly and all alike have a lev­el of treat­ment that is not based on in­come (or) sta­tus. That is what this in­vest­ment is do­ing: (pro­vid­ing) qual­i­ty, ef­fi­cient, eq­ui­table ser­vices. This is an in­vest­ment in the peo­ple of our coun­try,” Ali told the cer­e­mo­ny that was at­tend­ed by Prime Min­is­ter Mark Phillips, Vice Pres­i­dent, Bhar­rat Jagdeo, oth­er Cab­i­net mem­bers, health of­fi­cials, and res­i­dents of the area,

The gov­ern­ment said that the hos­pi­tal with 75 in­pa­tient beds as well as three op­er­at­ing the­atres, has been con­struct­ed to meet Chi­nese, British, and Amer­i­can med­ical stan­dards.

The Di­a­mond fa­cil­i­ty was con­struct­ed un­der a part­ner­ship with Chi­na’s Sinopharm In­ter­na­tion­al. It forms part of a broad­er GUY$37.2 bil­lion (One Guyana dol­lar=US$0.004 cents) ini­tia­tive, in which fa­cil­i­ties are be­ing de­vel­oped at five re­gions in Guyana.

Ali said that these fa­cil­i­ties are be­ing stan­dard­ised with match­ing equip­ment and ca­pa­bil­i­ties to en­sure seam­less, high-qual­i­ty care and eas­i­er long-term main­te­nance.

“We want to en­sure that a gov­ern­ment in­vest si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly in equiv­a­lent care so every Guyanese can have a min­i­mum stan­dard of care. Re­gard­less of which re­gion you’re from –that is what this gov­ern­ment is about,” Pres­i­dent Ali said.

Health Min­is­ter, Dr Frank An­tho­ny, said that the pre­vi­ous Di­a­mond hos­pi­tal, which had been in op­er­a­tion for 18 years, could no longer meet the grow­ing de­mand.

He said while tem­po­rary up­grades were made in 2020, in­clud­ing trans­form­ing it in­to “smart hos­pi­tal”, the gov­ern­ment de­cid­ed to build an en­tire­ly new fa­cil­i­ty to sup­port the ex­pand­ing pop­u­la­tion.

“We’re mak­ing sure that peo­ple liv­ing on the East Bank have ac­cess not just to health­care, but to the best health­care,” An­tho­ny said.