Guyana battling to achieve elusive MDGs

Mar 27, 2014 News

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– launches MICS to garner crucial information

Although Guyana has already achieved several Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and is well on its way to achieving several more, there are however some that are proving to be more elusive and costly to attain.

This disclosure was made yesterday by UNICEF Representative for Guyana and Suriname, Marianne Flach, even as UNICEF, together with the Ministry of Health, launched a Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS).
Guyana, Flach noted, has been able to achieve the MDGs relating to hunger, primary education, gender equality and environmental sustainability but is yet struggling to tackle MDGs Four and Five which speaks specifically to reducing infant and maternal mortality.
“While we have made significant progress in reducing Under Five mortality through better vaccination coverage and management of childhood illnesses, neonatal mortality is still a critical issue,” said Flach.
Even as she pointed out that “too many children still die from preventable causes within the first month of life,” she amplified the importance of the MICS which can provide needful data to identify the fatal trends in order to activate plans to address them.
The MICS, according to her, is an important monitoring tool for assessing the wellbeing of children, women and their families, as the MICS survey collects data for more than 20 of the 48 MDG indicators.
The MICS is said to the largest international household survey to collect information on many MDG indicators in a short period.
The launched MICS will be characterised by a data collection campaign which is being coordinated by Ms Florence Younge.
Speaking at a simple ceremony to launch the campaign at the Kingston, Georgetown, Nursing School Annexe, Flach, said that the MICS is a household survey developed by UNICEF in response to the World Summit for Children, held in 1990.
According to her since the inception of MICS, four survey rounds have been completed (1995, 2000, 2005-6 and 2009-10). The first round of MICS was conducted around 1995, and though Guyana did not participate, it was one of the 65 countries involved in the second round of global surveys conducted in 2000, and participated again in 2006.
Through the conducting of surveys, she disclosed, that “this has given the country, its decision makers and its donors, quality data that has started to map out development trends for the country.”
She is convinced that “for Guyana to continue making progress as a lower-middle income country, sound information on child rights indicators is crucial for formulating and revising national and sub national policies, and for monitoring to ensure the country’s progress toward the achievement of the MDGs, and other global commitments aimed at promoting the welfare of children.”
And this is important, Flach noted, in light of the fact that “gaps in data often impede Guyana’s efforts to formulate effective policies and programmes, and can present a challenge when channelling the country’s limited resources to those most in need.”
She acknowledged that Guyana is poised to address the current data gaps through the MICS.
“For children, this means that we will be better able to identify the critical areas which need to be addressed and ensure that they are protected, have better access to quality healthcare and education, and make better life choices so that they will have a sustainable future as they grow into adults,” said Flach.
She said that while the survey done in 2000 provided Guyana with a baseline for measuring progress, data collected in 2006 allowed for measurement of the improvements up to that point.

It is anticipated that the newest MICS will provide an excellent opportunity to “take stock of how far we have progressed since then, and identify priority areas for action through the collection of data.”
Flach explained that data generated from MICS, and other nationally representative household surveys, will be critically important, especially for the United Nations Secretary General’s Final MDG ‘Progress’ Report which will be launched in September 2015.
The upcoming MICS will also provide an opportunity for the inclusion of new indicators, such as those on life satisfaction and subjective well-being, alcohol and tobacco use, men’s health, chronic diseases and access to media and technologies.
“MICS is now structured to offer more information than before about children and women, adolescents and young people, thereby making it one of the few surveys of its kind to capture such in-depth disaggregated data on these groups,” Flach added.
The process is expected to see collaboration not only from the UN family, and the Ministry of Health but also other development partners which together will aid the collection of data for the survey by the Bureau of Statistics.
It is expected that the data analysis will be completed by August.
But according to Flach, “There must be sustained commitment and traction; to ensure the greatest returns for efforts and the most efficient use of the available resources. Each team member must have a clear sense of the mission and this must be a shared priority. Based on the tight timelines, it is critical that all possible delays are avoided.”
It is however anticipated that the process will be successful since it will be guided by a National Steering Committee comprising Government Agencies, the National Bureau of Statistics, UNICEF, Civil Society and other UN agencies, who are deemed critical in the area of promoting the rights of children and women.
According to Chief Medical Officer, Dr Shamdeo Persaud, “This opportunity at collecting data also serves importantly for us as we move forward…I think the information we collect here will be quite useful.”
He emphasised, too, that although achieving the MDGs Four and Five are of utmost importance Guyana is also looking keenly at MDG Six which speaks to the control of priority diseases including HIV/AIDS.
Currently Guyana, along with some 192 countries across the globe, is in the process of preparing for the post-2015 sustainable goals process. It is therefore looking “actively looking at what those indicators would be in the next period of development and how we will set about achieving them,” said Dr Persaud.

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