I would like to refer to an article published in the Stabroek News on Thursday October 21st, 2010. In every country there is the legal and moral obligation of government to protect its women by ensuring that they provide women with quality healthcare, especially when pregnant. Their life and the life of their baby must be preserved. Pregnant women must be protected and given the necessary care, as they are the carriers and bearers of the future. Guyana is still a developing country with a population of less than a million people. There are six billion people in this world. It is extremely reckless, unreasonable, wicked and unsubstantiated (for the Stabroek News) to use the general worldwide maternal mortality rate of 2008 in such a careless way, as to insinuate that Guyana is the significant contributor to that rate. The health care system in Guyana is not the best in the world and neither is it the best in the Caribbean, but Guyana has made momentous improvements in its healthcare system and facilities.
In fact, while the international maternal mortality rate is indeed alarming, according to World Bank Indicators, the United States maternal mortality rate in 2008 was 24 per 100,000 live births, that is, 2.4 per 10,000 live births.
Guyana’s maternal mortality rate in 2008, which was 27 per 100,000 live births, that is only 2.7 per 10,000 live births, slightly trailed the U.S., compared to the three other premier Caribbean destinations, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, and Barbados, all of which individually, more than doubles that of Guyana’s and the United States’.
The figures that follow should give this writer and the Guyanese population, a clear understanding of the flaws and inaccuracies of their not too carefully investigated article on maternal deaths. Trinidad and Tobago: 55 per 100,000 live births, i.e., (5.5 per 10,000); Jamaica: 64 per 100,000 live births, i.e., (6.4 per 10,000) and Barbados: 89 per 100,000 live births, i.e., (8.9 per 10,000).
It is truly distressing to fathom that any woman blessed with the gift of bringing into the world another human life should have to lose her own in the process.
This loss is tragic and avoidable; and in cases like Ester Dwarka-Bowlin’s and Yogeeta Bishram’s, it is shameful that trained nurses and hospital personnel would allow this to happen. (My heart goes out to the families of these women).
But it is most reckless of this journalist (from SN) to write and publish such hastily generalized assumptions which are entirely based on sweeping conclusions.
So the next time this journalist is burdened with the overwhelming task of properly investigating and reporting the facts of such a sensitive and important issue, I can only hope that she/he considers how important it is to practice responsible journalism.