Attention on youths as Ministry crafts Sexual and Reproductive Health Plan

Jun 01, 2014 News

---

It was writer Benjamin Disraeli who many years ago said “the youth of a nation are the trustees of posterity.” And since there is no denying this truism, moves have been consistently made across many sections of the globe to ensure that the wellbeing of youths are catered to in just about every facet of society.

It is therefore not surprising that the local Ministry of Health has for a number of years been seeking to put measures in place to better attend to youths. This is certainly not a passing development, as just recently top officials of the Ministry, together with a number of partner organisations, met to continue discussions aimed at putting in place a strategy that would even help to guide the implementation of policies as well.
This latest forum was held during the past week at the Grand Coastal Inn, Le Ressouvenir, East Coast Demerara.
Chief Medical Officer, Dr Shamdeo Persaud, told the gathering that the Sexual and Reproductive Health Strategy, once completed, will direct much focus to ensuring that youths have access to information on sexual and reproductive health.
“This does not only mean we are talking about contraceptives, morning-after pill or abortion services or those kinds of things, but they must first of all be able to access information on sexual and reproductive health; accurate and correct information,” said Dr Persaud.
He stressed that there have been occasions when information of this nature has been withheld from young persons, perhaps because of their age and the fact that they are yet attending school. But this state of affairs, he disclosed, may not be limited to young people alone, since even persons who are confined to prisons, among others, may not be able to readily access crucial health information.
Added to this, he said that there have been limitations to the services available.
Dr Persaud amplified the need for the widening of youth-friendly services to ensure that youths are not neglected in the delivery of health care.
“We would like to see transformation and a re-orientation of all of our health facilities in Guyana from level one (which is the health post) all the way to level five (national hospitals) to ensure that there is youth-friendly information, so that when youths visit to seek information about any health service they will be attended to and not sent away to go and bring their parents or to get consent.”
Dr Persaud said that unintended pregnancies and unsafe abortions, particularly among young girls, will also be given keen attention in the Sexual and Reproductive Strategy. But the Strategy in the making, according to the Chief Medical Officer, will not only cater to improved health services for youths in the society. Since the overall issue of sexual and reproductive health is high on the Health Ministry’s agenda he noted that “we thought it wise also to develop a draft policy document too (for Government’s attention) because there are several outstanding issues among policies relating to sexual reproductive health in Guyana.”
Moreover, attention will be directed to ensuring that proper health services are provided to not only women and girls but also men and boys as well.
And this is especially important, Dr Persaud said, since Guyana has been a participant in the International Conference on Population and Development, during which some commitments were made for countries to put strategies in place to improve the delivery of health care.
Among these were the need to put in place measures to prevent and control HIV and other sexually transmitted infections, including Syphilis, and Hepatitis B and C.
While both of the latter two mentioned diseases should be of concern to any health sector, Dr Persaud noted that Syphilis for instance, like HIV, has the additional challenge of being transmitted from mother to unborn child.
“So the elimination of Syphilis from mother to child is one of our goals…Congenital Syphilis has long term consequences on the health of the child; it is not common, but we want to avoid it altogether,” Dr Persaud asserted.
Although the impact of Hepatitis B and C has not been on a wide scale, the Chief Medical Officer said that it is recognised as a challenge, since it has the potential of causing severe complications, even to the extent of causing liver cancer.
These, according to him, are among the reproductive health issues that are being closely examined and therefore will find a place in the strategy which is getting immense support from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).
“They have been our major partner in developing the strategy and a policy document,” said Dr Persaud, even as he pointed out that the local health sector has thus been able to benefit from the expertise of two consultants, one of whom is a legal practitioner.
Support is also forthcoming from the Pan American Health Organisation, the United Nations Children Fund, the Guyana Responsible Parenthood Association, and there has also been support from gynaecologists, other medical practitioners and nurses, and even the Ministry of Finance.
According to Dr Persaud, although the Ministry has in place a maternal and child health policy, the strategy under construction will also direct some attention to this issue.
“Once we finish ongoing consultations we will take this to Cabinet and then they will decide if it meets their standard and decide what the next step is.”
The of crafting both the Strategy and Policy Document commenced about one year ago and, according to Dr Persaud, it is expected that a Sexual and Reproductive Strategy will be in place by this month end. He is hopeful that too that the Sexual and Reproductive Policy will gain the attention of policymakers before the end of the Tenth Parliament.

---

---