UK-Based Guyanese Doctor Slams Healthcare After Ronicia Niles’ Death

A United Kingdom (UK)-based Guyanese doctor has issued a stinging rebuke of the current state of healthcare in Guyana, drawing chilling parallels between the death of his own mother decades ago and the recent tragic passing of 22-year-old Ronicia Niles.

Niles, passed away on July 18, 2025 after receiving care at the new Diamond Regional Hospital. According to the Ministry of Health in a statement the patient arrived at the facility in critical condition, and she subsequently transferred to the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC), where she was later pronounced dead.

The ministry said Niles arrived at the Accident and Emergency Unit of the Diamond hospital around 11:50 p.m., reporting severe breathing difficulties that had started earlier in the day.

During the triage process, she became unresponsive. Medical personnel immediately began emergency interventions, including cardiac monitoring, oxygen therapy using a bag-valve-mask, and establishing intravenous access.

While extending condolences to Niles’ family, the ministry noted she had a known medical history of asthma but did not address the concerns raised by deceased family regarding the conditions at the Diamond hospital or the quality of care she received there

In a searing op-ed titled “Tears Run Dry”, Dr. Mark Devonish, Consultant in Acute Medicine at Nottingham University Hospital, recounts with painful clarity the moment his mother died in agony after being misdiagnosed at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC).

He describes her as a 30-year-old woman lying distressed on the floor of her shanty home, debilitated by abdominal pain and forced to wait hours for transportation to GPHC. Once there, Dr. Devonish says, she was met with indifference. The attending Emergency Room (ER) doctor, frustrated by her confusion and failing to grasp the urgency of her condition, left her to die.

The physician said a hasty diagnosis that his mother had appendicitis led to surgery, only to reveal a misdiagnosis—her abdomen was filled not with pus, but blood from a ruptured ectopic pregnancy. A simple pregnancy test, he said, could have saved her life. She died alone on her 31st birthday, leaving behind five orphaned sons.

Decades later, Dr. Devonish believes that same pattern of “uncaring incompetence” has cost another life—that of Ronicia Niles.

According to testimony from her brother, Ronicia, who suffered from lifelong asthma, arrived at Diamond Hospital in severe respiratory distress. Unable to speak but clearly conscious, she gestured to communicate—a clear sign, Dr. Devonish explains, that her brain was receiving enough oxygen, and her oxygen saturation was likely near normal levels, around 95%.

Yet, People’s Progressive Party (PPP) health officials claimed Ronicia arrived with a dangerously low oxygen saturation of 32%, a level that would have rendered her unconscious and made triage engagement impossible. Dr. Devonish argues that the contradiction highlights serious inconsistencies and probable mismanagement.

Ronicia in severe respiratory distress should’ve never been triaged, Dr. Devonish wrote. “Rather, a post-haste transfer to the Resus Area, assuming there was one, ought to have been undertaken for emergency treatment.”

Instead, Ronicia suffered a cardiac arrest, was “resuscitated of sorts,” and then transferred to GPHC. Dr. Devonish sharply criticised the decision to transfer a critically ill patient, calling it unsafe and inconsistent with evidence-based medical practice. Transfers, he noted, pose high risks and should only occur when absolutely necessary.

What is most damning, however, is Dr. Devonish’s assessment of Diamond Hospital and others like it, constructed under the PPP. Despite being labelled “ultra-modern,” he said Diamond Hospital lacks even basic features such as wall-mounted oxygen outlets and has no functional critical care unit or on-site specialists. Portable oxygen cylinders, reportedly shared and in short supply, are used instead.

“These hospitals,” Dr. Devonish declared, “are collectively useless white elephants.”

He took particular aim at Dr. Mahendra Carpen,  Head of Medical Services and Cardiology at GPHC, who recently touted the PPP’s healthcare system as superior to that of the Caribbean, United States, and Canada. Dr. Devonish dismissed the claim as “unequivocally false,” calling for public repudiation not just of the assertion but of Carpen’s professional representation.

He accused the government of catastrophic mismanagement of the health sector, despite unprecedented oil revenues: “Even with innumerable oil trillions, this corruptly incompetent installed government has failed to develop the health sector, such that it’s archaic today, as it was four decades ago.”

In a gut-wrenching close, Dr. Devonish reminds readers that the victims of this neglect are real people, including his own mother and now Ronicia Niles. “It’s for this reason, of an archaic health sector, that our loved ones will continue to suffer the fates of Ronicia and the mother of five: my beloved mother.”

The op-ed serves as a powerful call for sweeping reforms in Guyana’s healthcare system, rooted in accountability, competence, and compassion.