GEORGETOWN, Guyana – Guyana has called on Canada to establish a facility here that would train nurses for the region as well as the North American country as the Caribbean generally faces a serious shortage of health care workers as a result of migration.
President Dr. Irfaan Ali (Right) and Canadian High Commissioner, Mark Berman at the Canada Day Reception on Thursday night (DPI Photo)“We encourage Canadian accredited institutions to establish their footprint in Guyana for the training of nurses to meet your own demand, for the training of medical technicians to meet your own demand and also to meet the regional demand which includes our own demand,” President Dr. Irfaan Ali told a ceremony last Thursday night marking Canada’s 156th Independence anniversary.
Ali said his administration would be opening talks with development partners to have Guyana’s nursing institutions accredited by Canadian standards.
“I believe that if our nurses are good enough to be recruited from the training they receive right here in CARICOM, we are good enough to sell that service to train them for the rest of the world,” he said.
“I want to position Guyana as an important destination for the provision of regional human resource assets to meet the skill deficit of countries around the region and here is where I think there is a tremendous opportunity for Canada and Guyana,” President Ali said.
Ali said that this new collaboration could help address the shortage of nurses and workers in the medical field within the 15-member regional integration movement.
“Many of the fields are very technical fields, specialized fields. Many of the fields are in areas where Guyana and the CARICOM region are also facing tremendous difficulty.
“This is an area in which CARICOM as a region is severely challenged…the cycle in the movement of labor, we see more attractive markets attracting our medical workers (and) our nurses, leaving a deficit in our system and then within CARICOM itself, the more attractive markets would pull from within the system leaving further deficit in some countries,” Ali told the ceremony, known also as Canada Day 2023.
