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Health Ministry directing serious attention to men’s health

Feb 07, 2014 News

– as efforts are made to increase life-expectancy rate
A decrease in the life expectancy rate of the population has seen the Ministry of Health putting strategic measures in place to curb this state of affairs, wherever possible.  According to information emanating from the Ministry, the life expectancy rate for women currently stands close to 70 years old while the age for men is currently lagging behind, reaching ages between 64 and 65.
While statistics for the period 2012 through 2013 are yet to be released by the Ministry, Chief Medical Officer (CMO), Dr Shamdeo Persaud, said that “we actually saw a drop from the 2009 – 2010 period, and in 2011 – 2012,” during an interview with this publication.
According to the CMO, the situation that obtains for men is linked to murders, road traffic accidents and other violent deaths compounded by deaths caused by diseases.
“For example, even though we have few malaria deaths, almost exclusively or about 89 per cent of them are usually men. For HIV deaths also, men outnumber women,” Dr Persaud said.
He disclosed that the efforts of the Health Ministry are being geared towards realising an at least 70 years old life expectancy rate across the board.
In fact, efforts in this regard have been extensively amplified in the Ministry’s Health Vision 20/20 Strategy, which is intended to serve as “sort of a roadmap to achieving the goals that we set for increasing life expectancy to be at least, for both men and women, at 70,” said the CMO.  The Health Strategy is expected to guide the work of the Ministry until 2020.
But according to Dr Persaud, the health sector has quite a challenge on its hand to get more men on the whole to adopt health seeking behaviours.
“Men hardly ever, unless they are ill, visit a health facility to even get their blood pressure checked, check their blood sugar or get their weight and height measured, so that we could calculate their BMI; they don’t even come to do their heart test…” said Dr Persaud.
It is for this reason he observed that relatively healthy men would collapse. And some such cases were seen during the past year, said Dr Persaud.
“We had persons who we expect would be very fit in professions that they are expected to perform at high levels… and they just collapse and die.”
Moreover, the CMO disclosed that good health does not start merely with the way people treat their bodies, but also includes their lifestyles, behaviours relating to diets, exercise and health-seeking behaviours, which he noted is very minimal when compared to the rest of the Caribbean, especially when it comes to men.
As such, one of the important gaps that have been found by the health sector, Dr Persaud said, is the need to improve the level of health literacy. He noted that although people in Guyana have a wealth of information pertaining to health, they however fail to practice good health.
It is for this reason, Dr Persaud said, that the existing strategy, like previous strategies, aims at improving the livelihood and wellbeing of Guyanese in terms of health and wellness. The vision, according to him, is designed to help improve the health of Guyanese to an extent that it is comparable to that of not only persons in the Caribbean, but also across the Americas.
However, Dr Persaud noted “that is quite a long journey when it comes to North American indicators; when it comes to life expectancy, and reducing infant and child mortality and reducing maternal mortality.”
The efforts of the health sector are being fast-tracked, even as it seeks to combat the challenge of high suicide rates. He pointed out that Guyana is known for a lot of suicides, even as he explained that although a great number of women are known to attempt suicide there are even more males who succeed in this regard.
As such, he noted that there is an ever-growing need for the health sector to cater to the needs of the nation, particularly males, even as moves are made to tackle Non-Communicable Diseases including diabetes, heart diseases, hypertension, cancers and chronic lung diseases.

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