Georgetown: The Ministry of Public Health continues to emphasise the importance of vaccination and immunisation in an effort to have healthier babies. In this regard, the Ministry this morning commenced a three day workshop on its Maternal & Child Health Expanded Programme on Immunisation (M&C EPI).
During his remarks at the opening of the workshop, Minister of Public Health Dr. George Norton pointed out that a large portion of the national health budget is allocated for the procurement of vaccines and training of staff. This he added, is important because every mother and her child should be given the best quality of care.
The Minister stressed the fact that there should be no maternal deaths or infant mortality. “Every pregnancy should result in a live baby and a healthy mother,” he said. On this note, he informed the gathering that for the year 2015, there has only been three cases of maternal deaths recorded, and though the Ministry is aiming for zero this is an improvement.
Further, he highlighted several areas of improvement in the health sector with regards to immunisation.
Minister Norton highlighted that Guyana now offers sixteen (16) antigens/ vaccines and its coverage is over 90%. Also, for several years the country has not recorded cases of vaccine preventable diseases, except for a few tetanus cases in adults, which were recorded more than five (5) years ago.
He added that in relation to the Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission (PMTCT) HIV/AIDS transmission, the country has seen a reduction to less than 1%.
The Minister urged workers to continue to do their best and not to allow little hindrances to become an excuse for a child not being vaccinated.
He as he reflected on some of the remarkable efforts made by health care providers to ensure that every child in their catchment area is vaccinated, the minister said that, “it grieves me when I see little things like poor maintenance (of equipment) resulting in babies being deprived of vaccination…and this will be an area that we will be focusing on.”
PAHO Guyana country representative, Dr. William Adu-Krow who also addressed the opening of the workshop, noted that there has been slow progress in addressing infant mortality. “In ‘91 the infant mortality rate was estimated to be 45.5 … 2001 it had dropped to 38.5 and now 2015 the WHO (World Health Organisation) estimate…shows 32.0.”
Further, he noted that worldwide only 68.9% of the babies are fully vaccinated.
The workshop which is being held at the Grand Costal Inn targets health care providers within the child health and immunization field of the health sector. It is a collaborative effort between several partners including the Ministry, Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO), United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and aims at bringing staff up to date with the achievements of the sector as well as its weakness and the way forward.
The workshop will touch on numerous areas including, adolescence health, vaccine distribution, reporting of statistics, immunization and the way forward. The sessions are slated to be very interactive comprising presentations from various regions along with discussion sessions. The workshop concludes on July 30.
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