DESPITE a lack of space and a shortage of midwives at the Georgetown Public Hospital, its Maternity Unit has been making significant strides.
So far for 2017, there has been no maternal and infant mortality at the unit, Senior Midwife, Sister Denise Marks disclosed during a recent visit to GPHC by the Parliamentary Sectoral Committee on Social Services (PSCSS).

According to the Parliamentary Committee led by Dr. Vindhya Persaud, this is a “great improvement” when compared to previous years. The Maternity Unit is currently catering for referral patients, as well as those from Region Four.
Sister Marks told the Committee, which also included the Minister within the Ministry of Public Health Dr. Karen Cummings, that during the peak season, the Maternity Unit would surpass its capacity. .

“We have 23 beds in the prenatal unit, some days we would have more than 23 patients and we would still have patients in the Labour Room,” she pointed out.
There are 23 beds in the Prenatal Unit, nine beds in the Labour Room and six beds in the Birthing Room, and according to Sister Marks, there are days when all the rooms would be filled and there may be need for doubling up in the Prenatal Unit.
Weighing in on the incident, Minister Cummings said works are currently underway to upgrade the CC Nicholson Hospital on the East Coast of Demerara to cater to these needs.
But in addition to the lack of space, Sister Marks disclosed that there is an acute shortage of midwives.

“We need more midwives, we have 51 and double that is needed. We have one school of nursing and we only train midwives twice a year,” she pointed out.
The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) is currently funding a US$8M Maternal and Child Health Improvement Project for a period of five years. It was launched earlier in the year.
Under this project, safe and well-structured Maternal and Child Health Departments will be set up across the country, so that referrals to GPHC are minimised for low-risk births.
During the launch, the Public Health Minister Volda Lawrence said she was worried about Guyana’s continued high rates of maternal and infant mortality and said reversing those trends cannot be the sole responsibility of her ministry.

“The health sector, you and I know, is faced with a myriad of challenges at all levels and in varying degrees with our maternal and infant mortality appearing high on that list; our maternal mortality rates [are] estimated at 121/100,000 live births and infant mortality rates [are] estimated at 22/1000 live births,” Lawrence reminded.
The IDB, PAHO/WHO, USAID, UNICEF and the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) have stood out as major partners backing the local public health sector in the last decade “supporting health initiatives aimed at enhancing the delivery of primary health care to our people,” the Minister noted.

Nevertheless, the health sector challenges have remained daunting, Lawrence noted, highlighting the “proposed interventions of the bank in this particular initiative with the Maternal and Child Health Unit (MCH), which is beset by problems involving inadequate access, use [and] quality of reproductive maternal and neonatal health services.”
The project also intends to provide quality reproductive, maternal and neonatal care; strengthen the supply chain for contraceptive methods and drugs and blood products; and all processes relating to planning, procurement, storage, distribution, monitoring and evaluation, new management practices will become time-sensitive. The bank’s financial help will also fund improved collection, systemitisation, reporting and use of generated data to improve the quality of health information.