IN an effort to enhance life expectancy and lower the rate of infant mortality, the government, through the health ministry, continues to make strong investments that will improve healthcare across each region.
Minister of Health Dr. Frank Anthony was recently a guest on The Guyana Dialogue, where he commented on these investments.

“Not only have we decreased infant mortality, but we’ve also decreased neonatal mortality, meaning that for the first seven days of life, we’re having less children dying. And that’s because in the past we only had one neonatal unit at the Georgetown Hospital. But we have now been investing in developing regional neonatal units. So, all our regional hospitals they now have neonatal units,” Dr. Anthony said.
Doctors and nurses at these hospitals are being trained to man the neonatal units.

Meanwhile, the ministry has also developed a pediatric programme, where doctors are trained and sent out to these facilities to provide better quality pediatric care in communities.
This programme is highly accredited, and those who graduate from the pediatric training will receive a University of Guyana (UG) certificate.
“Because we have specifically looked at building the infrastructure out and providing more neonatal units, and train people to operate these units, we are seeing less deaths for neonates, and we are seeing, because of the strong programmes that we have, less children dying below the ages of one,” the minister said, adding that if this can be reduced, it will most definitely have an impact on life expectancy.

He stated that they are not only looking at life expectancy, but also health expectancy. The health minister stated: “So, along with life expectancy, we want to make sure that their health expectancy, or their health span, is increasing, so that you will live longer with better health.
“And so, that, too, is very important, because you don’t want to extend life expectancy and for the last ten years of people’s life, they’re very sickly. That’s not what we want,” the minister said, before noting that they are trying to combine two things. These are ensuring that persons live longer and healthier, and have a very long life.

Additionally, the minister mentioned one of the many programmes introduced by the government called the School Health Programme, which seeks to provide every child that has entered the school system with free health screening. Children will benefit from eye and hearing screening, dental checkups and general checkups.

Nearly 20,000 nursery school children have benefitted from this. Once this set is completed, the minister said they will be moving to primary school children, where they estimate more than 200,000 pupils will be screened. Secondary school students will follow.
“Over the life of a child, we’re ensuring that we screen them at least three times. And so, if we pick up things early, we’ll be able to address them early. So, this is in keeping with this lifestyle approach, and intervening at every stage to make sure that people live longer and healthier lives,”
By enhancing their efforts in promoting screening, the ministry will be able to identify issues early, and intervene early, further preventing subsequent complications that come with late diagnosis.