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Health sector gearing to introduce literacy initiative
A move towards health literacy is being embraced by the Ministry of Health in an earnest quest to educate the populace on the importance of not only making healthy choices, but to raise awareness about where relevant health services can be accessed.
This disclosure was made by Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Shamdeo Persaud, during a recent interview. He underscored the need for the health sector to raise awareness for the need to ramp-up the whole effort towards personal responsibility as it relates to health, even as he pointed to the importance of communities’ action in this regard.
Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Shamdeo Persaud
Dr. Persaud disclosed that in order for this strategic plan to foster a meaningful impact, there is need for health literacy to be introduced at the level of the education sector. Moreover, he spoke of the significance of the initiative to serve as a means to further develop the health and family health life programme in the country’s schools.
“I think the biggest challenge is to integrate health as a mainstream part of our education sector… other than that we are looking at improving our delivery of materials in a non-traditional way.”
Dr. Persaud alluded to the predominant use of the mass media to disseminate relevant information to the public, even as he pointed out that most times the media opts to report on events occurring in the health sector. He is hopeful that the literacy drive will see the media working in close collaboration with the Health Ministry, where not merely health events but issues will take centre stage.
“We are hoping for a change in the way things are currently done. We would like to see the media reporting on issues that the public needs to know about that will benefit it. It is not only about the outbreaks and the maternal and infant deaths or some unfortunate incident, but there should be reports about obesity and the promotion of healthy eating – the importance of road safety to prevent accidents on our roadways and the impact of smoking and alcoholism are also issues we would like to see highlighted in the media.”
The highlighting of such issues, he said, will in fact mirror a move by community health facilities which are now seeking to fully embrace the concept of primary health care. Primary health care, he explained, was in fact approved globally since 1978, but was not fully implemented in many countries. However, with a call by many, including the World Health Organisation to improve its delivery, accentuated by the theme “the ultimate goal of primary health care is better health for all”, efforts are being made to renew the integration of primary health care in systems worldwide.
According to WHO, “globalization is putting the social cohesion of many countries under stress, and health systems are clearly not performing as well as they could and should. People are increasingly impatient with the inability of health services to deliver, and few would disagree that health systems need to respond better – and faster – to the challenges of a changing world. Primary health care can do that.”
Primary health care, Dr. Persaud asserted, has the potential to bring not only health services to the population, but includes the population in a lot of the health decisions, thereby building its capacity.
“Even if you are treating someone for a disease, unless they understand the social consequences and what are the dos and don’ts, it wouldn’t make much of a difference,” Dr. Persaud opined. He made reference to diabetes, which can be impacted by lifestyle choices since it requires not only treatment that is obtained from health facilities, but certain types of foods being consumed and regular exercise.
“There are other risk factors associated and people need to know how to protect themselves from complications. It is for this reason that ‘health literacy’ will be one of the more exciting endeavours we will engage with the help of the media,” Dr. Persaud added.
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