Guyana to be healthiest nation in Caribbean and Americas by 2020 – Minister Cummings

Jan 11, 2017 News

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An informed population will make informed choices and as such, nutrition education plays a vital role in ensuring that Guyanese are aware of what nutrients the body requires.
Moreover, in 2016, some 3,427 persons benefitted from nutrition education activities which were conducted by the Ministry of Public Health’s Food Policy Division. Among the beneficiaries were parents, students, teachers, community members, teenage mothers, senior citizens, police officers and persons within the workplace setting.
Collaborations were also done with Ministries, various workplaces, Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs), Faith-Based Organisations (FBOs) and Community-Based Organisations (CBOs) to conduct public education and community-based nutrition sessions to provide skills and knowledge in the preparation of nutritionally balanced meals for the family.
The foregoing was recently disclosed by Junior Minister of Public Health, Dr. Karen Cummings.
Dr. Cummings revealed that the Ministry currently has as its vision that “All people of Guyana are among the healthiest in the Caribbean and the Americas by the year 2020.”
To achieve this, she stressed the importance of proper nutrition, even as she outlined that nutrition will play a vital part in ensuring that this vision is realized, since it has major bearing on the overall physical health of an individual.
“In order to improve nutrition in the population, we must first assess what the nutritional needs of the population are and at what cost these needs can be met. This is why nutrition surveillance is conducted to guide policy and programme decisions which result in improved nutrition,” Minister Cummings asserted.
In this regard, a nutrient cost analysis was conducted. Nutrient cost analysis seeks to investigate the minimum cost of the food basket required by an individual to meet his/her basic nutritional needs. Moreover, Dr. Cummings said that data on food prices was gathered in all of Guyana’s 10 administrative regions, with data obtained from Regions One, Six, Seven, Eight and Nine being used to spread awareness in Mabaruma, New Amsterdam, Bartica, Mahdia and Lethem via an outreach initiative dubbed ‘Healthy Affordable Eating’.
During the outreach, she disclosed that interviews were done with approximately 50 diabetic patients in Lethem to ascertain eating habits given the high prevalence of diabetes reported there. Added to this, in- service training was conducted with seven Regional Food Price Collectors to improve the credibility of the food prices collected in the hinterland regions.
Other Nutrition Education work spearheaded by the Ministry included deployment of Nutrition Officers to 20 health facilities offering antenatal and infant clinics to address issues of maternal and child nutrition, and nutrition assessment and counseling to persons living with HIV who were considered to be at high risk.
“Work continued in 2016 to boost our human capacity to conduct nutrition education sessions, with 31 students being trained in the Nutrition Education component of the Environment Health Assistants Training Course,” said Minister Cummings, as she spoke of other training. These included the training of 12 physiotherapy students on “Nutrition for Athletes,” 25 Community Health Workers in the Basic Nutrition component of their course, 14 Community Volunteers in the Diabetes Signature Programme in Albouystown and 12 Cooks from Buxton and Enmore in General Hygiene and Food Preparation.
Community Nutrition Officers and Nutrition Auxiliary Workers also participated in training sessions in collaboration with the National AIDS Programme Secretariat on Medication and Interaction with foods for persons living with HIV.
Meanwhile, Minister Cummings disclosed that a revision of Guyana’s Food-based dietary guidelines was conducted. This revision was conducted in collaboration with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and three Multi-Stakeholder Sessions were conducted in this regard in 2016.
Five persons were trained to be a part of the research team to conduct surveys on the knowledge and use of the current Food-Based Dietary Guidelines for Guyana.
Guyana’s revised Food-Based Dietary Guidelines will be completed by July 2017 and will be launched during the Nutrition Awareness Week activities, according to Minister Cummings. According to the Minister too, there is currently a draft of the New Nutrition Strategy being funded by UNICEF. The previous strategy expired in 2015. The draft strategy, she added, is currently being reviewed internally at the Ministry of Public Health and a meeting with key stakeholders to review the draft has been planned for this month.

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