Medicine shortages in Guyana: Ali's dashboard and the 90 % promise

"You will be sent home": the June 2026 warning

On 8 June 2026 President Irfaan Ali met regional health officers and hospital administrators at State House with Health Minister Dr Frank Anthony, Finance Minister Dr Ashni Singh and Public Service Minister Zulfikar Ally¹. He announced that the system run through the Materials Management Unit (MMU), with a digital dashboard of stock levels across the country, would become the sole platform for pharmaceuticals and medical supplies on 1 July¹². "On the 1st of July, every other system will be collapsed out of operation," he said¹.

Emergency purchases now require approval from the Director of Regional Health Services, the Chief Medical Officer and the head of the MMU, with a monthly review by senior officials¹². "There is absolutely no situation where the regions must be purchasing emergency drugs," Ali said, unless the purchase is signed off on the system by those three officials, according to Kaieteur News and the CMC wire service²¹². Kaieteur reported that the warning followed allegations of unjustified procurement by health officials in some regions².

A long record of stock-outs

The dashboard answers a documented problem. A performance audit by the Auditor General, published in September 2022 and covering 2015 to August 2018, found that "Essential items were out of stock for long periods". Poor inventory management and no buffer stock led to frequent stock-outs, the units "were unable to supply 43% of requests from Health Facilities", and facilities waited as long as 50 days for supplies⁶. Poorly written contracts led to more than $300 million being paid without the drugs being received, and there were losses of $950 million from expired drugs and supplies over three years⁶.

Shortages have crossed governments. In 2017 Guyana Times reported more than 100 essential drugs in short supply at the Suddie pharmacy in Region Two, with diabetic patients paying for their own medicines⁸. In October 2020 the new administration said it had discarded $742 million in expired drugs, borrowed medicines from neighbouring countries and spent about $3 billion restocking⁷. In July 2025 President Ali ordered the MMU digitised by year end: "I don't want to hear that it is not available"¹¹.

The complaints that continued

In November 2025 the opposition party We Invest in Nationhood (WIN), led by Azruddin Mohamed, said the parents of a four-month-old could not obtain prescribed phenobarbital and chlorphenamine at Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation and had to buy them privately, and asked the Ministry for detailed transparency on public pharmacy spending⁵. The report carried no response from the hospital or the Ministry⁵. During the 2026 budget debate, opposition members said patients were being advised to seek treatment privately; Minister Anthony replied that all citizens are entitled to treatment in the public system and that patients "must not be redirected to private services"⁹.

Why it matters for physicians

Chronic disease depends on continuity. Health Minister Anthony has cited around 20,000 people with diabetes and about the same number with hypertension, a figure that includes people with both conditions¹⁰. When Guyana introduced national HbA1c testing, the programme reported unreliable early service and found more than a third of people tested in the 30–70 age group with HbA1c above 9 %¹³. A missing refill is a clinical event, and a patient sent to buy a medicine privately may also end up outside the regulated supply chain.