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Guyana Health and Welfare Services
Until World War II, medical facilities in rural areas were
inadequate. The extension of workers' compensation to agricultural
workers in 1947 and the subsequent establishment of the medical
services on the sugar estates did much to improve rural health
care. The World Bank estimated that 89 percent of the population
had access to health care in the late 1980s. Some children under
twelve had been immunized against measles (52 percent), and
diphtheria, pertussis, and tetanus (DPT) (67 percent), figures that
are about average for the region. Health expenditures by the
government were 3.7 percent of all expenditures in 1984.
In 1988 there were 21 hospitals, 47 health clinics, and 115
rural health centers in Guyana. The country counted 2,933 hospital
beds for a bed to population ratio of approximately one to 280.
Guyana's seven private hospitals and the largest public hospitals
are in Georgetown.
Statistics for 1988 showed 164 physicians in Guyana, which made
for a physician-to-patient ratio of one to 5,000. About 90 percent
of the physicians were in public service. Most physicians in the
private sector were also holding government jobs. Approximately
half of the country's physicians were expatriates from communist
countries, such as Cuba and the Democratic People's Republic of
Korea (North Korea), who were assigned to work in Guyana as part of
bilateral agreements. These foreign professionals experienced
significant language and cultural difficulties in dealing with
patients.
Guyana's 789 nurses made for a nurse-to-patient ratio of one to
1,014 in 1988. There were an additional 875 nursing assistants and
409 trained midwives. Because of the shortage of nurses, many
health care functions that in developed countries would be
performed by nursing personnel were assigned to nursing students.
Thirty-eight pharmacists were licensed to operate.
A national insurance program was established in 1969. It covers
most workers and self-employed people for disability, sickness, and
maternity. The program is administered by the National Insurance
Board. Workers with permanent total disabilities are paid their
full salary; those with temporary disabilities get at least 60
percent of their salary. Employees with illnesses can receive 60
percent of their salary for up to six months. Women can take
maternity leave for up to thirteen weeks with 60 percent of their
salary. Guyana also has a pensions system that provides a basis of
30 percent of earnings starting at age sixty-five. Employers and
employees alike pay into all of these insurance funds, which are
administered by the National Insurance Board. Social security and
welfare accounted for 2.7 percent of government expenditures in
1984.
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Current information on Guyanese society is difficult to obtain,
especially in book form. Some of the most useful books about Guyana
that have appeared since independence include Henry B. Jeffrey and
Colin Baber's Guyana: Politics, Economics and Society, which
focuses on the political system but also contains several
interesting analyses and observations on Guyanese social structure
and ethnicity, and on the impact of government policies on
education and religion; and A Political and Social History of
Guyana, 1945-1983, by Thomas J. Spinner, Jr., which offers a
detailed discussion of the social and economic forces operating in
Guyana during the turbulent 1950s and through independence,
including most of the Burnham period.
Andrew Sanders's The Powerless People: An Analysis of the
Amerindian People of the Corentyne River is about the ethnic
identity and values of a small population of coastal Amerindians
living along the Suriname border. Although the topic sounds
somewhat narrow, the analysis offers much on how ethnicity is
experienced and handled throughout Guyanese society. The book
includes a clear discussion of the various approaches to the study
of Guyanese ethnicity taken by social scientists since the 1950s.
Perhaps the most famous book published about Guyana since
independence is Walter Rodney's posthumous A History of the
Guyanese Working People, 1881-1905, published in 1981. Less
than a decade after its publication, this book had become a classic
in the literature on Caribbean societies. Rodney's careful analysis
of the forces shaping Guyanese society at the end of the nineteenth
century provides a basis for understanding the conflicts of modern
Guyana.
The works of two anthropologists, Raymond T. Smith and Leo A.
Despres, are very helpful in understanding Guyanese society between
the World War II and independence. Smith's British Guiana is
regarded by many as the best book on Guyanese society in the
colonial period. Other works by Smith have focused on kinship
structure, especially among Afro-Guyanese. Smith's The Negro
Family in British Guiana: Family Structure and Social Status in the
Villages is a classic of Caribbean anthropology. In the late
1980s, he published a further analysis of his field data in
Kinship and Class in the West Indies: A Genealogical Study of
Jamaica and Guyana. Cultural Pluralism and Nationalist
Politics in Guyana, by Leo Despres, is concerned with
understanding the nature of ethnicity in Guyana. Despres sees
Guyana as an example of a "plural society" composed of separate
cultural communities. His analysis is based on fieldwork in AfroGuyanese and Indo-Guyanese villages.
It is impossible to understand Guyanese society in the second
half of the twentieth century without an acquaintance with the
economic history of the country. Two works published in the 1970s
are very helpful in this regard. Alan H. Adamson's Sugar Without
Slaves: The Political Economy of British Guiana, 1838-1904
looks at the indentured labor system in the nineteenth century. Jay
R. Mandle's The Plantation Economy: Population and Economic
Change in Guyana 1838-1960 is concerned with British Guiana
from the end of slavery to the closing years of the colonial
period.
A number of books on specialized topics were published in the
1980s. Education for Development or Underdevelopment?, by
M.K. Bacchus, provides an analysis of changes in the Guyanese
education system since World War II. Peter Rivière's Individual
and Society in Guiana is a review of anthropological knowledge
about the Amerindian cultures of the Guianas. The book focuses on
kinship and political systems at the village level. (For further
information and complete citations,
see
Bibliography.)
Data as of January 1992
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