More high risk pregnancies being referred to GPHC – Health Minister

Dec 07, 2010 News

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More than 150 high risk and serious pregnancies have been referred to the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation in recent months and according to Minister of Health, Dr Leslie Ramsammy, doctors and nurses of the public health facility have worked tirelessly to gain the desired results.
It was just two weekends ago, he revealed, that three high risk cases were seen by officials at the hospital, noting that the attention they received was instrumental in saving both mothers and babies’ lives alike.
Officials were up to Friday still battling to save the life of one mother, Minister Ramsammy revealed.  “Our nurses and doctors are working to get results. Some of these people come into the hospital almost dead but we have people that do work despite the odds…and that is the story that has not been told,” the Minister asserted.
But according to him, the last four months have in fact been the most stressful in his tenure as Minister of Health, even as he revealed that “I put my career on the line when I became Minister of Health.”
He explained that in assuming the post he had established certain areas in which he wanted to be judged. And in order to ensure that his declaration would have become a reality, several measures were put in place to pave the way for a successful tenure.
“I didn’t ask people to judge me on the whole performance of the health sector. I wanted to be judged in a very limited way on the most risky areas. I said judge me on what we have done for child health and for maternal health and life expectancy in Guyana.
“Those were the three things I promised this nation 10 years ago to improve and I asked them to judge our performance around those areas.”
At the time of his appointment, Dr Ramsammy recounted that the life expectancy was 64 but noted that by the end of 2008 the life expectancy age had risen to 70, one of the areas that the Health Ministry has excelled in.
The same can also be said for the area of child health, Minister Ramsammy said. The Ministry was faced with a mortality rate of between 53 and 88 in terms of children under five years old, he said.
This has since been reduced to between 22 and 37, he added. “We have made progress and yet I am not happy (with the situation) in certain areas like stillbirth. The progress has been real but slow. And I think that in the next five years I would like to see it accelerated and I certainly would like to end my career with the accelerated improvement in place,” the Minister noted.
Addressing the area of maternal health, the Minister said that the public health sector has moved from statistics of 32 per 10,000 to between nine and 13 in terms of mortality, which according to him, represents a marked improvement.
Nonetheless, he vocalised concerns that “we are too fragile in our work. If last year we averaged nine per 10,000 and this year we would most likely be around 12 per 10,000 from the figures we have… I would not like to see nine to 12 but lower. We seem to have stagnated.”
But despite the evident improvement in the area of maternal health, the Minister said that the Ministry has not in the past 10 years obtained the kind of disparaging results it has seen in the last four months.
“I can’t recall a period in any four months where we have had so many maternal deaths…I think there were about six over this last few months.
That is an embarrassment for me. It is an embarrassment that bothers me; it is really and truly something that is unacceptable.
“So there again we have to work with a little bit more commitment so that it never happens again in our country and I really hope that it never happens again.”
Moreover, efforts will be sustained, the Minister said, to ensure that training remains amount the paramount features when it comes to the delivery of health care, as will be the provision of medicines and other commodities.
A lot of measures were put in place over the past few years and particularly over the last few months to ensure the delivery of service is improved, he added.
“We have never had as many training programmes as we have now and never had as many medicines and commodities as we have now and so therefore there is no excuse.
“There is a time where we have to hold our health workers accountable and health workers will have to know that sometimes punishment will be there…”
But though disciplinary measures may in some cases be necessary, the Minister asserted that there still remain many very committed and dedicated workers who have done an excellent job over the years.
He noted that while there is no plausible excuse for the spate of recent maternal deaths “I do need to remind people these same health workers are also the ones that have brought us to this improved stage in which we are today.”

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