Guyana improving cancer screening, testing capacity

Last Updated on Sunday, 8 October 2023, 13:56 by Denis Chabrol

Guyana’s public health care system is now delivering cancer biopsy results in less than two weeks rather than waiting several months, says Health Minister Dr Frank Anthony.

After visiting the doctor and biopsy specimens from suspicious lumps are taken, he said up to last month it took a long time before patients received results, resulting in the “agony” and distress of waiting to known whether or not they have cancer.

“Up to about a month ago, if you took a biopsy at the GPHC (Georgetown Public Hospital), it probably took you about three months to get back the results. 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 finalised 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 do these interpretations, now we can send it other parts of the world where pathologists there can interpret it,” he said. With the equipment already purchased, the Health Minister said that high-tech facility is expected to be up and running by yearend. Mount Sinai, he said, is the United States’ reference laboratory.

In terms of increasing capacity to take much more mammograms rather than only at the GPHC which took 1,300 mammograms, Dr Anthony International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has agreed to provide Guyana three mammogram machines that would be installed in three other locations. “This is going to be a gamechanger 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 so that the cancer registry could provide more accurate information. Acknowledging that in many instances, the statistics were not complete, 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 what are the next steps.

Saying that Guyana’s percentage of Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) is the major cause of cervical cancer as well 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.