Guyana’s President Irfaan Ali this Wednesday submitted a request to the Cuban ambassador in Georgetown to “bring in Cuban nurses” with the aim of alleviating the shortage of health workers in the country. “We are in talks” with Havana, assured the President, who is facing a shortage of at least 600 nurses in his capital’s public hospital alone.
The petition illustrates the crisis in the country. According to Ali, Guyana lacks 1,300 female health workers for the health system to function properly and some of the nurses are “doubling their shifts” to attend to patients.
Ali argued that other countries like the US, Canada or the UK, as well as some in the Caribbean, were going through a similar period of doctor shortages. His solution is to train more nurses “in the medium and long term” in order to be able to count on a larger number of specialists, at least in the future. As an additional measure, the government of Guyana increased the wages of all workers in the health sector from December 2022.
Former Health Secretary Leslie Ramsammy said authorities were happy with the island’s toilets
Late last year, Guyana’s government praised the work of the Cuban Medical Brigade in that country, and former Health Minister Leslie Ramsammy assured authorities that they were pleased with the island’s health workers. “Our health sector.” Today it can take care of itself because 45 years ago young Cuban doctors, men and women, left their homes and families to serve the Guyanese people and thanks to them today Guyana has its own specialists and doctors, who graduated from our college,” Ramsammy said at the time.
In St. Vincent and the Grenadines, on the other hand, the situation with Cuban doctors is already tense. In addition to attacking Dr. Alfredo Batista Salgado, when he returned to his home in Kingstown on July 1, there were two more attacks on Tuesday night. The Vincentian prime minister, the communist Ralph Gonsalves, appeared on national radio – as he had when Batista was stabbed – and said he had learned details of both cases.
The doctors attacked included a man who suffered “cuts” on his hands and a woman who was “hit in the nose with a rock,” Gonsalves reported. The attack occurred in the early morning of July 11 in the northeast of the city.
He added that “someone” had been taken into police custody and was “assisting” the officer in finding those responsible. “I spoke to the police to ensure the safety of our Cuban brothers working on the island,” he concluded. Neither the Cuban Ministry of Health nor the government have commented on these attacks.
For opposition politicians, the stabbing of Batista is a clear sign of the violent tendencies affecting the country. Godwin Friday, leader of the New Democratic Party in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, alluded to the crime, citing it as an example of the prime minister’s mismanagement of crime. He also expressed in a press release his wish for the wounded to recover and for the “crisis” caused by “Comrade Ralph’s” party to end.
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