Guyana is adopting a 15-year global blueprint on women, child and adolescent health, which aims at protecting their physical and mental well-being and open up economic and social opportunities.
Director of Maternal Child Health, Dr Ertenisa Hamilton
The universal strategy with a 2030 wind-up focuses on nine core areas; that is country leadership, health systems resilience, community engagement, humanitarian and fragile settings, accountability for results, resource and rights, financing for health, individual potential, multisectoral action and research and innovation.
The covenant targeting women, children and adolescents was scrutinised at the recently-held United Nations (UN) Secretary General Global Strategy for Women’s Children’s and Adolescent’s Health 2016-2030, convened in Bridgetown, Barbados.
Director of the Maternal Child Health attached to the Public Health Ministry, Dr Ertenisa Hamilton; Senior Medex of the Ministry’s Regional Health Services (RHS) Department, Lolitta Rebeiro; and Specialist Family and Community Health of the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO) Guyana Office, Dr Janice Woolford, comprised the team representing Guyana at the forum.
The consultation was organised by the Regional Coordinating Mechanism for the adaptation of the Global Strategy for Women’s, Children’s and Adolescents’ Health to the Latin American and Caribbean context.
The strategy envisions a world in which every woman, child and adolescent in every setting enjoying the rights to physical and mental health and well-being, has social and economic opportunities, and is able to participate fully in shaping sustainable and prosperous societies.
The Bridgetown sub-regional consultation was aimed at building synergies for the implementation framework which wants to end preventable deaths while simultaneously achieving health and well-being of women for the target group.
The forum also eyed expanding the enabling environments for this grouping to thrive utilising three key objectives: survival by ending preventable deaths; thriving: via ensuring health and well-being; and transformation by expanding all enabling environments.
Hamilton explained that the Public Health Ministry will be looking at the broad aspect of survive, thrive and transform so that no woman, adolescent or child is at risk of preventable death. She noted that the rights-based approach is of vital importance to Guyana and adapting this principle to the context of the Caribbean is imperative in maintaining a healthy population.
“Guyana will be looking closely at the multisectorial approach to women, children and adolescent which is very important as well as the community base platform. The IDB funding that we have is going to support the beginning of the preview which will focus primarily on reproductive health,” Hamilton said.
Guyana continues to face the challenge of reducing its maternal mortality ratio, its neonatal mortality ratio as well as its fertility rate for the adolescent population. These threaten the medical system and also have grave social implications which can translate to negative economic growth for the country.
A glance at the Public Health Ministry’s budget indicates that chronic NCDs continue to get the largest chunk of the annual budget because most unhealthy habits are developed during the adolescent years and focusing on it can help reverse poor choices by this group.
A UNICEF study on Guyanese women and children show that those of Indigenous origin continue to be most vulnerable.
