some cases were referred to the Medical Council for disciplinary action. Dr. Anthony made the disclosure during his response to a question posed by APNU’s Member of Parliament, Dr. Terrence Campbell during the consideration of the 2026 budget estimates. Dr. Campbell reminded that the Minister in December had underscored the urgent need for improved accountability, strict adherence to clinical guidelines, and higher standard of care across the health system.

“Tie this to a couple of cases, can you share with us how  we are looking to improve adherence to protocols because there have been some really sad cases recently,” Dr. Campbell questioned. In his response, Dr. Anthony stated that his ministry is working with Mount Sinai and other partners to establish those guidelines. He noted that within the ministry, they are setting up a Quality Audit, which will see specialists going to various hospitals to determine whether these guidelines have been adhered to.

“We don’t want this to be punitive. We want first of all for people to comply that they’re doing the right things, and so we will be doing that and monitoring people and teaching as we go, and we hope that that would help to improve the standards,” he said. Additionally, the ministry is working with the Joint Accreditation International: “Now what that helps us to do is that they have a whole set of indicators that you have to comply with, and we want to make sure that we are on that pathway, to make sure that the quality that we are delivering at our hospitals meets those standards. So, this is another thing that we’re doing to improve quality in our health care system,” he revealed. During his response, the minister also said: “Now, over the last year, we have had 11 maternal deaths. That has come down from 22 maternal deaths, maybe six, seven years ago, so we are making progress. When we examine some of the cases, they could have been handled differently, and in  each one of these cases, we had the maternal mortality review committee that went through them and in some of the cases, they have been recommended to go before the Medical Council for disciplinary action.” According to Dr. Anthony, there are varying degrees of action that can be taken. These range from sending health professionals back for retraining to striking them off the register if they find gross negligence. Highlighting a previous case, where it was reported that a young child had a kidney removed, the minister said it turned out that the child had only one kidney. “Now, you had a whole set of experts that got together, and at the time, the best judgment was that they thought it was two kidneys and one was infected and to save that child’s life, they had to do the intervention. So, they went in and did the surgery, and then afterwards, they recognised that it was one kidney. Now the team, we have put them under investigation. There’s a report that is pending, and when that report is completed, relevant action would be taken, and it’s being reviewed by overseas experts as well,” he explained. The Health Minister added that these cases are not treated “lightly” and some are “very complicated.” (Kaieteur News)