Ministry recruits key personnel to help tackle soaring adolescent pregnancy rate

Jul 10, 2019 News

Even as Guyana battles with the daunting reality that it has the highest rate of adolescent pregnancy in the English-speaking Caribbean, tactics to revise the trend are underway.
Guyana’s adolescent fertility rate is well above the Latin America and the Caribbean average, especially among Indigenous girls.
Moves in this direction are taking the form of a $117M project which is being funded through an agreement Guyana signed earlier this year with the India-United National Development Partnership Fund Project.
The India-UN Development Partnership Fund is a dedicated facility within the United Nations Fund for South-South Cooperation established in 2017.
It is supported and led by the Government of India, managed by the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation, and implemented in collaboration with the United Nations system.
Moreover, the India-UN Development Partnership Fund supports Southern-owned and led, demand-driven, and transformational sustainable development projects across the developing world, with a focus on least developed countries and Small Island developing states. United Nations agencies implement the Funds projects in close collaboration with partnering governments.
The executing agency of the project is the United Nations Population Fund [UNFPA], through its sub-regional office for the Caribbean while the Ministry of Public Health and the Guyana Responsible Parenthood Association [GRPA] are the implementing partners.
The project is one that seeks to target the reduction of adolescent pregnancy in the administrative Regions One [Barima/Waini] and Nine [Upper Takutu/Upper Essequibo].
To strengthen its planning, monitoring and evaluation components, the Public Health Ministry, in close collaboration with the UNFPA, is seeking to recruit a Monitoring and Evaluation [M&E] Officer.
The M&E Officer is one who will be tasked with working under the direct supervision of the Head of the Adolescent Health Unit within the Public Health Ministry and will work closely with UNFPA and other project stakeholders. Once retained, the officer will be responsible for leading the planning monitoring and evaluation interventions of the project implementation
Also, the ministry is seeking the services of a National Programme Officer for Sexual and Reproductive Health [SHR].
The incumbent in this regard will be required to plan, direct and control formulation and implementation of all project related activities in keeping with the project document as well as the oversight provided by the institutional arrangements guiding the implementation of the project activities.
The incumbent will contribute to the positioning of the UNFPA and the Ministry of Public Health at the national level and the administrative regional levels with the accomplishment of project objectives.
The SRH Officer will work under the direct supervision of the Head of the Adolescent Health Unit within the Ministry of Public Health and will work closely with UNFPA and with other project stakeholders providing technical guidance throughout the project implementation.
Based on a report of the Situational Analysis of Adolescent Pregnancy presented to the government by the United Nations Children’s Fund [UNICEF], it was discovered that in coastal Guyana, 90 out of a thousand girls between the ages of 15 and 19 gave birth during 2010 and 2015.
However the hinterland accounted for the majority of teenage pregnancy, amounting to 105.
The project is, moreover, designed to provide the availability of, and access to quality sexual and reproductive health information and services, including commodities for adolescents.
It is expected that will be implemented in three phases in all five sub-regions in Regions One and Nine, simultaneously.
`Specific goals include a 10 percent reduction in adolescent pregnancy in the two regions by March 2022 so as to assist in Guyana’s efforts to realize three of the Sustainable Development Goals: Goal 3 – Good Health and Well Being; Goal 5 – Gender Equality and Goal 10 – Reduced Inequities.

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