VAMED Fires Back at Health Ministry Over Stalled Ogle and New Amsterdam Hospitals

By Mark DaCosta- An Austrian hospital builder has publicly accused Guyana’s Ministry of Health of sabotaging two flagship hospital projects. The accusation comes in a media statement issued in Georgetown on 6 November 2026 by VAMED Engineering GmbH, the contractor for the Georgetown Paediatric and Maternal Hospital at Ogle and the New Amsterdam Hospital Campus.

VAMED says the ministry withheld payment for certified work, held up building materials at the ports and piled on bureaucratic hurdles. It also argues that the ministry lacked the expertise to administer a demanding international contract. The ministry rejects this account. Because the dispute is heading for arbitration, the statement is one side of a contested story, and the cost of the stalemate falls on Guyanese families who were promised modern care.

VAMED presents itself as a seasoned operator with more than 1,000 projects in 96 countries, and it insists the fault lies elsewhere. Its institutional representative in Guyana, Dr João Pedro da Silva Teles, said that in four decades the firm had “never experienced the degree of administrative obstruction that we encountered in Guyana.” He added that “the Ministry of Health repeatedly stood in our way,” and he warned that officials would rather “sweep the issue under the rug.” The company says “there is considerably more to this story than has been made public” but is limited in what it can disclose while arbitration is pending. It insists it “will not allow our silence to be mistaken for agreement” with the ministry’s version.