[www.inewsguyana.com] – As the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) 2015 deadline approaches, the Government officially launched Guyana’s MDG Acceleration Framework and Campaign to improve Maternal Health.
While reaffirming Government’s commitment to achieving all the MDGs, Minister of Finance, Dr Ashni Singh called for more accelerated action by the global community to achieve MDG eight, which is to develop a global partnership for development.
The MDG acceleration framework was published by the Government of Guyana in collaboration with UNDP, with the view of accelerating progress towards achieving maternal health-related targets.
The 72-page document represents a comprehensive articulation of the nature of maternal mortality, priority interventions required and identification of resource gaps where they exist, based on countrywide consultations with stakeholders, communities (targeting male, female and teenagers), and health care providers. Visits were also done to key regional hospitals.
Much focus has been made on MDGs one to seven, and Minister of Finance, Dr Ashni Singh stated that the architect of this MDG framework recognised the importance of this global partnership for development as integral for the rest of the goals, in fact it is difficult to achieve the rest of the MDGs if this particular goal is not met.
The MDG provides a structured framework of development goals, within which the major development challenges as it relates to quality of life are contained. Guyana is at a point where all its MDGs are likely to be met, however MDG five- maternal health seems to be in jeopardy, he said. Minister Singh added that the challenges of achieving this goal are of much public commentary, noting that every single maternal death is an incident that should not occur.
“Whilst I remain convinced that these incidents should not occur and we need to get to a point where none of these incidents occur, it would be remiss of me not to acknowledge that there are health workers who are committed are thousands of incident free delivery and births every year in our health care facilities across our country, and that fact must be acknowledged,” Minister Singh pointed out.
Maternal mentality has significantly decreased in Guyana over the past two decades, in fact it has moved from 325 per 100,000 live births in 1990 to about 100 to date. [Extracted and modified from GINA]
