Contract signed for Gy$5M dialysis centre

The Health Ministry last Friday signed a Gy$5 million contract for the construction of a brand new dialysis centre which is expected to be completed by February 2011. The facility will be housed in the compound of the Georgetown Public Hospital.

Dialysis is a medical process that is used when a person’s kidneys are damaged and can no longer filter toxins from the blood. A dialysis machine filters the blood and returns it to the body. It’s a three-to-four-hour-long process that must be done two or three times a week.          

Health Minister Dr Leslie Ramsammy said the facility, which is free to the public, is part of efforts to address the many health issues that Guyanese are faced with. 

“The centre will be functioning with three chairs, two for operations and one serving as a backup. The dialysis machines will cost approximately one million dollars each and the water system for the facility will cost US$25,000,” said the health minister. 

Approximately 1,500 litres of blood are filtered by a healthy person’s kidneys each day. People whose kidneys either do not work properly or not at all experience a build-up of waste in their blood. To have dialysis done, it would cost approximately $Gy36,000 per session and that session has a mandatory 10 additional treatments that must be completed. 

Minister Ramsammy noted that this facility, which will be free for public use, is indeed a great project the ministry has taken on. For every dialysis session done, the ministry will pay a fee of US$90. This fee will be going for the use of the laboratory, fluids consumed and other disposables. Minister Ramsammy lauded those private companies, Balwant Singh Hospital and 5G, which have been providing dialysis treatment over the years. 

Trained professionals from Canada: nurses, etiologists and engineers, will be conducting training exercises to equip our local practitioners with knowledge of dialysis operations in the pre-stages of the completion of the facility. 

There are two main types of dialysis: haemodialysis and peritoneal dialysis. With haemodialysis, the blood circulates outside the body of the patient – it goes through a machine that has special filters. The blood comes out of the patient through a catheter that is inserted into the vein. The filters do what the kidneys do; they filter out the waste products from the blood. The filtered blood then returns to the patient via another catheter.  The patient is, in effect, connected to a kind of artificial kidney.

With peritoneal dialysis, a sterile solution rich in minerals and glucose is run through a tube into the peritoneal cavity, the abdominal body cavity around the intestine, where the peritoneal membrane acts as a semi-permeable membrane. The dialysate is left there for some time so that it can absorb waste products. Then it is drained out through a tube and discarded. This exchange, or cycle, is generally repeated several times during the day – with an automated system it is often done overnight.