GEORGETOWN, Guyana, Health Minister Dr. Frank Anthony has said that the public health care system is now delivering cancer biopsy results in less than two weeks rather than waiting several months.
Dr. Anthony was speaking at the launch of Pinktober, an initiative of the Guyana Telephone and Telegraph (GTT) Company.
“Up to about a month ago, if you took a biopsy at the GPHC (Georgetown Public Hospital), it probably took about three months to get the results back.
“Well, I’m happy to report to you that we’ve changed that a little bit, so probably the turnaround time is within twelve days,” he said at GTT’s launch of Pinktober.
He also announced that infrastructural works were being finalized at GPHC to host a telepathology facility, with assistance from Mount Sinai, to take high-resolution images of biopsies and send them to any lab internationally.
“You’ll now have a digital image that the pathologist will interpret, so if our challenge has been that we don’t have enough pathologists in Guyana that we can make these interpretations, now we can send it to other parts of the world where pathologists there can interpret it,” he said.
With the equipment already purchased, the Health Minister said the high-tech facility is expected to run by yearend. Mount Sinai, he said, is the United States’ reference laboratory.
In terms of increasing the capacity to take many more mammograms rather than only at the GPHC, which took 1,300 mammograms, Dr Anthony said the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has agreed to provide three mammogram machines that would be installed in three other locations.
“This is going to be a game changer where many more women will be able to come to the public sector and get a mammogram free of cost,” he said.
The Health Minister said, “We’re working on” updating statistics to provide more accurate information to the cancer registry. Acknowledging that the statistics were not complete in many instances, he said most of the information being provided to the cancer registry comes from the Ministry of Health’s hospitals rather than the private health sector.
“We sometimes don’t get timely information from the private sector, and this is something we’re working to correct so that we can get a more accurate picture of what is going on with cancers,” he said.
Guyana’s Health Ministry plans to unveil its cancer screening guidelines that will state when persons should be screened, their age, how often, and understand if they are at risk and the next steps.
Saying that Guyana’s percentage of Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) is the primary cause of cervical cancer as well as anal-rectal and penile cancer, Dr Anthony said more Guyanese boys and girls need to take the HPV vaccine so that there could be a significant drop and virtual elimination of those cancers in 15 to 20 years.
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