Latest update February 10th, 2025 7:48 AM
May 20, 2022 News
By Rehanna Ramsay
Kaieteur News – While Guyana has seen a significant decline in the area of maternal mortality rate in recent years, the Ministry of Health is continuing its partnership with PAHO/WHO to further advance the progress.
Speaking on the sidelines of the Maternal /Child Health Department’s Quarterly Review event on Thursday, Minister of Health, Dr. Frank Anthony told Kaieteur News that the local health sector will bolster its work with assistance from the Pan American Health Organisation/ World Health Organisation (PAHO/WHO).
Dr. Anthony noted that the Ministry of Health (MoH) is slated to receive more technical assistance from PAHO, which is critical to the training of maternal and childcare officers in the ten administrative regions of Guyana.
Minister Anthony said that the Ministry of Health and PAHO (Guyana) will be rolling out another programme to enhance essential health services nationwide. He explained that part of a package will be to address the issues affecting the adequate provision of maternal and childcare services. According to the Minister, the programme will also be useful for the expansion of facilities, medicines, health services, and medical equipment for healthcare workers. This, he said is crucial to achieve the overall goal of access to universal healthcare services for all Guyanese.
Meanwhile, Guyana’s PAHO/WHO representative Dr. Luis Codina, who also spoke at the event, explained that PAHO/WHO has been proactive in its efforts to HELP Guyana achieve targets under the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGS) for Good Health and Wellbeing. One of these targets Dr Codina explained is to end preventable deaths of newborns and children younger than 5 years of age by 2030.
As such, he noted that the PAHO/WHO have been providing support particularly to health care workers in the far flung regions.
He said, “Maternal Mortality remains a major risk for Guyana but we have working with the health sector to provide support to women to reduce those deaths which we believe are preventable.”
Dr. Codina continued: “We are working to achieve zero maternal mortality as a result of haemorrhaging and blood-related issues. We provide training and other types of support to the healthcare centres… For example, in regions that is very difficult for the women to access adequate healthcare services, we provide them material needed to help reduce hemorrhaging because this is one of the main reasons for many maternal deaths there.”
In 2014, Guyana was known as the country in the Caribbean region with the highest maternal mortality rates. MoH statistics show that in 2015, 14 maternal deaths were recorded while in 2016, 14 deaths were also recorded, however the mortality rate jumped to 116 deaths per 100,000 live births.
In 2018, Guyana’s mortality rate was at 229 maternal deaths, which is said to be an overwhelming number for a country with a population of approximately 750,000.
However, a successful alliance with PAHO/WHO resulted in a sharp decline in Guyana’s mortality rate in 2019, just one year later. In fact, the death rate fell to a range of seven to 14 in 2019.
A 2019 MoH report noted that this was due to the fact that PAHO had started monitoring and assessing the maternal deaths locally.
This resulted in PAHO finding that a significant number of the maternal deaths were related to serious haemoglobin deficiencies, which are not detected until late in the pregnancies. This deficiency, a report by the agency said, can lead to serious blood loss (haemorrhaging) in childbirth, which eventually leads to death.
Specifically, it stated that since 52 percent of women go into labour with a low percentage of haemoglobin, and as such, recommendations were made and taken on board for the improvement of the haemoglobin levels in pregnant women.
Further, the report noted that acquiring zero maternal deaths coincides with Guyana achieving the human rights conventions set by the United Nations (UN) to eliminate all preventable maternal deaths.
Even as Guyana made strides towards zero maternal mortality by working the PAHO/WHO on several priority areas, the Ministry of Health within the last five years has placed greater emphasis on creating an overall better access to primary healthcare for pregnant women.
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