Latest update April 1st, 2025 5:37 PM
Social policy to support six-month maternity leave under consideration
Primary health care simply defined is essentially health care that is based on scientifically sound and socially acceptable methods and technologies that are universally accessible to individuals, families and communities as a whole.
Dr. Shamdeo Persaud, Chief Medical Officer
This notion was recently amplified by Chief Medical Officer (CMO), Dr. Shamdeo Persaud, who pointed out that while the general delivery of health care, is a mandate of the health sector, primary health care is one that requires full involvement of respective communities.
It is therefore expected that primary health care services are offered at a cost that communities are able to bear, said Dr. Persaud as he asserted, “It is not things people cannot achieve or cannot afford to have access to, and it is usually developed in the spirit of self-reliance and self determination.”
The involvement of communities, he said, is crucial to assess what people’s needs are from their perspective. “It focuses health beyond traditional hospital care…it is more towards health equity and production of healthy social policies,” asserted Dr. Persaud as he pointed out, “We are not only talking about Government policies and so on, but social policies – the way we behave among each other, the support men give to their wives or other pregnant women in society.”
This, according to Dr. Persaud, can also translate to the amount of leave afforded women after they would have delivered their babies.
“We are still tied with this three months NIS requirement and if you look carefully at the law it is really one month of confinement, and then two months after the mother has got her baby, so how is this woman breastfeeding this baby for six months,” questioned Dr. Persaud.
The CMO, who was at the time speaking at a Maternal and Child Health/Expanded Programme on Immunization (MCH/EPI) half year review meeting, disclosed that breastfeeding is seen as one of the tactics that can serve to combat obesity in babies.
Moreover, he stressed the need for the implementation of social policies to address this shortcoming.
A few years earlier, the CMO had told this publication of discussions which were leaning towards the possibility of having mothers in the CARICOM Region being eligible for six months of maternity leave to ensure new born babies are exclusively breastfed. This approach, he related is designed to tackle childhood obesity.
According to the CMO, childhood obesity starts in the womb depending on the kind of nutrition mothers take and to the extent that they maintain health. He insisted that not only is breastfeeding important to the wellbeing of babies but they are less likely to be hooked on sugar or high calorie foods.
“Sugar and salt are acquired tastes. If you don’t expose them to sugar they like what you give them and they grow up. Breastfeeding transitioning into complementary feeding is a much more acceptable way of controlling children’s weight,” he said.
Dr. Persaud had moreover lamented that the three months maternity leave contradicts the six-month exclusive breastfeeding that is promoted by the local Health Ministry.
“This was one of the things that came up…how we could start stimulating Governments to open the discussion about our mothers. We can’t have mothers going back to work in three months and we are, insisting on, and think there is a value of breastfeeding for six months; so the two things do not coincide,” he stressed.
Dr. Persaud had posited that, “The Ministry would have to advocate for this (six months leave) but of course there could be some economic costs since Guyana is still a growing society. Taking into consideration that many women may not have formal employment contracts, Government may have to prepare social security programmes,” he added.
“Those are some of the things we want to get into. If we have cross-regional policies, Governments are more likely to comply. And countries must have standard,” noted Dr. Persaud
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