By Caribbean Medical News Staff
Guyana has announced that it will reach its objectives regarding its international obligations under Millennium Development Goal 5 to Improve Maternal Health in that country with assistance from international agencies. The country has made some strides but still has some work to do according to officials there.
The MDG Acceleration Framework (MAF) with assistance from the UN will see these objectives come to pass in Guyana according to the Finance Minister Dr. Ashni Singh who spoke to the need for investments to be made for achieving MDGs.
“We remain convinced that the MDGs provide a structural framework of development goals and a structured framework within which the major development challenges, as they relate to the quality of life, are conceived”, he said.
To this end, the Finance Minister urged that Guyana has “invested significantly in our national budgets over the years in our social sector. In fact, the social sector has seen, over the years, an investment averaging 20% of our national budget,” he said.
Meanwhile the Chief Medical Officer of the Health Ministry, Dr. Shamdeo Persaud said that there have been some achievements reached but more needed to be done in Guyana and the Ministry’s Director for Maternal and Child Health, Dr. Janice Woolford had this to say:
“A validation workshop, including stakeholders from government agencies, the private sector, civil society and development partners was carried out in March 2013, and the main objectives were to validate the interventions both ongoing and planned that were aimed at improving the quality of maternal health care for women in Guyana, we have seen a reduction in our maternal deaths in 2013 and 2014, and we know that the MAF document will further impact positive efforts to improve maternal health in Guyana.”
Guyana’s maternal mortality rate remains significantly high says UN Resident Coordinator Khadijah Musa. “Guyana is among the list of countries that has shown or demonstrated leadership in this issue and worked to honour the MDG acceleration framework document aimed at highlighting both challenges and pragmatic solutions on how to progress on lagging MDGs and to reduce disparities in progress to date,” she continued.
