Today is World Health Day and according to the World Health Organization, before the day is over, 30,000 children under the age of 5 around the world will die. And before the year is out, 20 million will have died. The staggering worldwide infant mortality rate took center stage today in activities to celebrate the day. In Belize an opening ceremony was held at the Matron Roberts Clinic and 7NEWS was there.
Keith Swift Reporting,
Between the display on domestic violence from the Police Department and child abuse from NCFC, the only good news at today's Health Fair on child and maternal health was that the Belize's infant mortality rate is slightly lower than the worldwide average.
Vildo Marin, Minister of Health
"It's not so much of a big problem in our country, thank God and also thank the health professionals who have been very instrumental in ensuring that we don't have such a high rate. Of course the maternal death rate would seem high because of our very small population."
Dr. Jose Lopez, Dir. Central Medical Region
"In our country at least 15% of pregnant women are at risk of presenting complications due principally to insufficient prenatal attention. Our women present a probability of dying because of complication of pregnancy 20 times more so than women living in the so-called first world countries. And the most dramatic thing about this is that the causes of death are totally preventable and treatable."
Preventable and treatable if mothers would take advantage of pre-natal services. Nurse Helen Moguel is a veteran healthcare worker. She is now with the Integral Clinic and she says the biggest problem facing pre-natal healthcare in Belize is the lack of it.
Nurse Helen Moguel, Integral Health Clinic
"For some the pregnancy is not showing yet so they think that there is no sense in going for healthcare. Some we have a lot of young pregnant mothers and sometimes their parents don't know they're pregnant until it starts to show, and some of them that have had a lot of children say they've had so many children and they haven't had any problems so they wait until its nearly time and they go. So its various problems and various reasons why they don't come to the clinic early."
"What we find as a challenge is to get mothers to come and register early in pregnancy. So that we could care for them from the beginning of their pregnancy until they deliver and after they deliver. We find that people come to join the clinic when they are in their second trimester or in their third trimester which is the second 3 months of pregnancy or the 3 three months of pregnancy. We would like them to all join early, the first three months of pregnancy, so that we could detect any health problem that could affect the mother or the child."
And all that can only happen if pregnant women actually make it to a clinic. Julie Vasquez who is a volunteer with the helping hands counseling center says there are untold numbers of mothers and their unborn babies who never make it to a clinic because of abortions.
Julie Vasquez, Helping Hands
"These young girls they can avail themselves of pills; over the counter it is sold. Actually abortion is illegal in Belize but it needs to be enforced in a proper way because the laws I think are very loose on this. I don't criticize but maybe this area just needs to be given a little more focus and attention. Our girls can go and purchase things over the counter. We have a lot of not really doctors, quacks out there, who are just destroying the life and beauty of our young girls telling them and showing them how to tear a precious life out of them and to destroy it."
But as the theme says - every mother and every child counts. Health Minister Vildo Marin says that is especially true for a developing country like Belize.
Vildo Marin,
"For us mother and children are very important because we know that the mother are the ones who take care of the children and of course if we have healthy children we have a healthy society and we have a productive one. Certainly we want to have a healthy nation so that we can have a productive country."
The United Nations' Millennium Development Goals aims to cut the infant mortality rate by two-thirds by 2010. At the current rate in Africa that will take 150 years.
