President Dr Mohamed Irfaan Ali on Wednesday urged healthcare workers to give their best to patients, as he commissioned the new $6.6 billion Bath Regional Hospital in Region Five.
The facility, which replaces the outdated hospital at Fort Wellington, features 75 beds, two dialysis units, a new CT Scan machine, and three surgical theatres. Close to 1,000 persons have been employed to work at the hospital.
“In this new era, there are some things we cannot overlook. We cannot overlook that in the last five years, we have trained more health professionals than at any other time in the history of our country,” the president said.
Ali added that healthcare workers have seen significant increases in salaries over the past five years.
“We cannot avoid the truth that we have increased the salaries of healthcare workers massively in the last five years, and we will continue [to do that],” he noted.
While acknowledging this progress, the president pointed out that there are still some human resource gaps in the health sector. These, he said, will be addressed in the short term through the importation of skilled workers.
“I have mandated the Minister of Health to ensure that we bring in every single skill that is needed in this short to medium term… because I do not want to hear that we don’t have the doctors, the nurses, the lab technicians or anyone at these hospitals to run it properly,” he stated.
The hospital was constructed to meet Chinese, British, and American medical standards and will offer 24/7 emergency care, maternity and neonatal services, surgeries, and outpatient clinics.
Several other initiatives are underway to support the development of new hospitals, including the implementation of the National Health Information System and the Patient Management Information System.
“[These systems] will enable us to capture data that will allow us to have early intervention, early care, early diagnostics, so that it gives you a longer and healthier life,” the president explained.
The Bath facility is part of a wider $37.2 billion initiative, which includes hospitals at Lima (Region Two), De Kinderen (Region Three), and Skeldon (Region Six). It adds to those already opened in Diamond and Enmore.
A CT scanner at the new hospital
The Bath Regional Hospital Commissioned
Nurses at the commissioning
