– Youth MinisterWith a view to ensuring that teenagers are able to access needful healthcare, a proposal has been made by Minister of Culture, Youth and Sport, Dr. Frank Anthony, to remedy any impeding legislation.Dr. Anthony tendered this suggestion in recognition of the fact that some health workers are unwilling to provide certain levels of healthcare to young individuals without parental consent.Youth Minister, Dr. Frank AnthonyThis state of affairs he classified as “a major issue across the Region,” as similar practices were related by representatives from Caribbean territories who attended a recent International Conference on Population and Development. The confab was held at the International Conference Centre.And it was following initial deliberations that Dr. Anthony in the company of Health Minister, Dr. Bheri Ramsaran, and Chief Medical Officer (CMO), Dr. Shamdeo Persaud, sought to brief the media on the foregoing session.“Right now across the Region there are varying challenges, because if teens want to access sexual reproductive health services from the health system, the health workers do not provide this,” lamented Dr. Anthony, who has an extensive background in healthcare delivery.Moreover, he said that one of the things that the meeting advocated for is to change the fact that health care is not readily provided to some teenagers.“If there are legislative barriers that are in place we can remove those barriers to allow teenagers access to healthcare, because it is more detrimental if they don’t get the service,” Dr. Anthony asserted.He referred to recorded facts which state that of the more than 14 million births per year, close to 74 thousand are to teenage mothers who die during childbirth. Adding to this daunting state of affairs, is the fact that another 2.2 to four million young girls have varying degrees of difficulties during their pregnancy experience, the Youth Minister explained.“So it is a big issue and it is something that we have to pay close attention to…This is something that relates specifically to Guyana and the programmes we have in place,jerseys from china,” said Dr. Anthony,Cheap Jerseys Online, who used the opportunity to emphasise moves by Guyana to address the situation.“We have seen in Guyana trends where teen pregnancy has been decreasing… This is because we have put a number of programmes in place in terms of education which I think has contributed to the decrease,” he boasted.But although teenage pregnancy is viewed as a challenge for the Health Ministry, Dr Persaud confirmed that the rates have been noticeably decreasing. According to him, in 2003, the under-15 age group accounted for close to four percent of all pregnancies, but was reduced in 2011 to just about one per cent. This reduction, according to Dr Persaud, represented less than 100 pregnancies.During the same period, too,Cheap Jerseys From China, there were about 5.2 per cent of girls between the ages of 15 and 16 who were pregnant, but the percentage was reduced to 2.6, Dr. Persaud noted.And though the age of 17 is regarded as a consensual age of sex, the CMO disclosed that the Ministry of Health has ascertained that even pregnancies among girls between the ages of 17 and 19 have declined. He revealed that in 2008,Cheap Air Max 95 Sale, girls this age accounted for 21 per cent of all pregnancies, but by 2011 the figure had dropped to 17.1 per cent.“Across all of the age groups we have made significant progress in reducing pregnancy in the under-19 age altogether,” said Dr. Persaud.Moreover, it was deduced that the health sector, because of intervening programmes, has been scoring successes in reducing the incidence of complicated pregnancies, since teenagers are viewed as the main group that suffers from high-risk pregnancies.However, it is the view of Dr. Anthony that there is need for more advocating at the international level to put more programmes in place, “especially at our health centres, to offer sexual reproductive health to our young people as an essential part of the package of reproductive health services that we offer.”As such, he concluded that the recent conference was a move in the right direction, adding that “I think we will be making some serious recommendations on how we move forward.” However, the decisions that were arrived at during the conference and the ultimate recommendations have not yet been disclosed to the media.The forum, which continued over a period of two days, also directed focus on the declining of funding to some health programmes across the Region.“We have to be careful that these programmes are properly absorbed within our countries and that we continue to allocate monies for the fight against sexually transmitted diseases such as H