Maternal and Child Health Coordinator, Carol JnoBaptiste has made a call for policies to address challenges currently affecting prenatal and child care on the island
JnoBaptiste was addressing the opening ceremony of the Dominica Nurses Association’s midwives conference this morning.
“There are a few challenges that to our services face,” she stated. “There are lack of policies that give oversight to critical areas such as child care and immunizations, care for high risk groups, a mother’s right to refuse care in the antenatal period and for an adolescent health policy.”
She also alerted those in attendance to the fact that the use of contraceptive has been affected because of Government’s decision to decrease the methods available to the public and this has also upset the administering of maternal and perinatal care.
Access of citizens to the three hospitals and 52 health centers currently in operation in Dominica is another issue that requires confrontation and debate according to Ms. JnoBaptiste.
She claimed, however, that despite ever present challenges the fact that all births in Dominica are attended by skilled health personnel can be recorded as a success and even with a perinatal birthrate as low as 24 in 100,000 in 2009 there is still a lot of work to be done.
“The success of our Maternal and Child Health program requires the active participation of everyone, not just nurses, but our partners, funding agencies and most of all the population which is affected,” JnoBaptiste said.
Well said, you are indeed an asset to this great and humble profession. May you continue to grow in grace, and continue to serve your people, and may i say i think you are beautiful.
few questions: how did government decrease the contraception methods available to the public?did she mean through the govt. service?
is accessibility to public health services (govt. services )in Dominica ,really an issue?
the phrase “even with a perinatal birth rate as low as 24 in 100,000”,shouldn`t that have read perinatal death rate?.
Congratulations to all the Midwives: Mitchel, George to mention a few. They are the ones who run the labour ward the doctors are the on-lookers. And still if u ask for them to be present when there is a delivery the patient has to pay $500. the health officials should put something in place to compensate the nurses just like how the doctors get compensated.
Alot is lackin when it comes to maternal care. A mother looses her baby and after she has passed out a still born child she is told that she can’t go to antenatal because it would be difficult to be amongst mothers and their newborns; that’s understandable however is put in prenatal. Isn’t this just as bad? There’s no one to provide counselling after going thru such a tramatic experience. U are just sent home..come on Health Officials let’s get real……
Congratulations to all midwives on the celebration of International Midwives Day. The role you play in assisting in bringing one into this world is phenonmenal.
Congratulations to Dominica Nurses Association on organising this empowerment session. You have shown you are not only about stating the reasons you are fed up with poor working conditions, but is very much concerned about the professionalism of your members.
Thanks DNO for bringing this to our attention.