President Donald Ramotar yesterday said that it is unacceptable that there is shortage of medication in the health sector, while from time to time large amount of drugs have to be destroyed and he challenged the powers that be in the sector to hire the right people for the job.
The President, who was speaking at the Ministry of Health’s launching of its ‘Health Vision 2020’ strategic plan for 2014-2020, also said it is unacceptable that mothers are still dying during childbirth.
“We spend billions of dollars to buy drugs to ensure that our people have access to resources yet many times when I go about the country I am confronted by people telling me they have shortage of drugs and then … there is [a] shortage like recently and you have to go and buy emergency. …Then you hear how much millions are being written off because of drugs being expired…,” the President said.
He said drugs being destroyed is “totally unacceptable, that is not acceptable at all” and he called for more thought to be put into the purchasing of drugs pointing out that the country has had a Ministry of Health since “Noah was a boy.
“Don’t we have an idea how things are used, how they should be purchased? …These are things we have to correct, we are a poor a country… How much more could be done if we did not have these kinds of wastage?” the President questioned.
“I think we have to strengthen the management… Management and attitude I think are important to focus on and management would include picking the right people for the right job,” the President said candidly.
He said while things have improved in the health sector “there is still huge room for further improvement” even though the government has invested billions of dollars to improve the services delivered to Guyanese. According to him, Guyana is the only country in the Caribbean which has 30% of its national budget go to the social sector with health taking a sizeable amount of the sum.
He pointed out that health is important to the country’s economic development as a healthy workforce can only increase productivity.
He called on the management of the health sector to take heed noting that when there is a problem in one sector others will be affected.
“Resources are not unlimited and there is a lot… of need out there…,” he noted.
Meantime, the President said he has always been “very upset” reading about deaths at the hospitals, maternal deaths in particular, and he said attitude has a lot to do with it. “I believe that the medical profession is a special profession. It is a profession that is strongly rooted in humanitarian conviction of people, at least it should be and therefore I find it sometimes unacceptable when some of these things happen,” the Head of State said.
He said the situation has to be corrected as it is a situation that the country cannot afford. When young women die it is “a big, big loss to our country as a whole for their own development and the contribution that they can make.”
In what might have been a preemptive bid, Minister of Health Dr Bheri Ramsaran had said earlier that while there are problems, maternal health has been “doing fairly well and we are on our way to achieving the Millennium Developmental Goal (MDG).
“We have made progress and a lot of the progress in securing for our nation safe motherhood and a healthy under five population…,” the minister said, and he even called for a round of applause for the Maternal and Child Health Department of the ministry.
However, while Ramsaran said boldly yesterday that the country is on its way to achieving MDG 5, in October he had indicated that once expectant mothers continue to die the country’s prospects of achieving that goal were grim, even though he was optimistic.
“We have been trying to maintain that but it is borderline now… this is a fragile one, this is a borderline one and this is what happens when you are dealing with small numbers and a shift of one or two can throw you out of whack,” Ramsaran had told Stabroek News.
The maternal mortality rate is the annual number of female deaths per 100,000 live births from any cause related to or aggravated by pregnancy or its management (excluding accidental or incidental causes). It includes deaths during pregnancy, childbirth, or within 42 days of termination of pregnancy, irrespective of the duration and site of the pregnancy for a specified year. Within Caricom, Guyana’s maternal mortality rate is second only to Haiti, which has a rate of 350/100,000. However, considering that Haiti has a population of 10.1 million, compared with Guyana’s 750,000, Guyana would be deemed to have a more alarming mortality rate in terms of its population density.
UNDP Resident Representative Khadija Musa had told Stabroek News earlier this year that MDG 5 seemed difficult to attain. “One goal that seems difficult for Guyana to meet by 2015 is MDG 5 maternal mortality. I would point [to] that as a pressure point for Guyana… I know they are doing everything that they can but it seems hard,” she had said.
