Health sector seeks to raise awareness about termination of pregnancy

Jan 16, 2013 News

The Ministry of Health is currently on a mission to raise awareness among women about the medical termination of pregnancies and according to Minister of Health, Dr Bheri Ramsaran, young girls will be a major target for edification. The move is premised on observations that the first sexual encounter of girls is at a very young age.

Minister of Health, Dr Bheri Ramsaran

“We hope to have our young girls more enlightened because the debutant age is somewhere between nine and 11, so we’ve got to wake up and smell the coffee and start working with these young people.”
Added to this, the Minister said that strides will be made towards empowering women so that they know that they have a choice and do not have to be subjected to becoming pregnant. As such, he stated that efforts will be made to ensure that they have access to reproductive health products so that “they determine and have control of their lives.”
Dr. Ramsaran noted that continued efforts will be made to improve the existing pregnancy termination process, that is, from Dilation and Curettage (D&C) to the more sophisticated method of Manual Vacuum Evacuation, which is rated as much safer.
According to the Minister, the latter method causes less damage to the inner uterine lining and there is less possibility of infection and trauma to the uterus which could lead to infertility as well as continuous chronic issues and even pain.
“This is a well thought out plan. We are not just rushing into it madly and we are certainly not using termination of pregnancies as a method of birth control.”
Chief Medical Officer (CMO), Dr Shamdeo Persaud, indicated that all doctors who are certified to perform the surgical procedure will have their names published in the Official Gazette and their names will also be placed on the Medical Council’s website.
“We would like to encourage the public also to utilise those doctors who are certified to use those procedures if they need a termination of pregnancy and we are appealing to other doctors to have their licences updated for the year 2013,” Dr Persaud emphasised.
The termination of pregnancy is facilitated by an Act which was passed in the National Assembly in 1995. Prior to this, the CMO pointed out, because of the pressure of deliveries, the health sector wasn’t able to provide that service consistently. But according to him, the termination of pregnancy has always been offered by the public health sector.
“We have always done so with regard to persons who are victims that are raped and become pregnant, cases of incest, or other instances where it is absolutely required in terms of protecting the woman’s life.”
However, in accordance with the existing Act, the CMO said that moves will be made towards providing the service on a more regular basis with the commencement of a training programme for those operating in the key area of obstetrics. He stressed that the termination process should always be a conscious decision of both the woman seeking the operation as well as the health professional required to conduct it.
This is important since according to him “not everyone is of the conviction that they can do a termination of pregnancy in a healthy pregnancy. So all those factors need to be taken into consideration and once doctors are comfortable, we will commence offering this service to women who are unable to afford to pay for the service which is offered routinely in many private sector institutions…”
As part of being certified to conduct such procedures, doctors must undergo training and the facility in which they operate must be inspected and licenced by the CMO to deliver such a service.

Chief Medical Officer, Dr Shamdeo Persaud

“What is happening is already what is in the law books and it is a very serious, well described piece of legislation…the doctors have to be trained, and it is not every doctor that gets in his head that he can do this surgery that will be allowed to do so. He has to be retrained, he has to be re-certified and the institution wherever he is doing it, regardless of what level it is, has to have that certification,” said Minister Ramsaran.
Added to this, there is also a process of counselling which patients should be subjected to.
Even as he noted that there are a number of private doctors that have offered the service, the Minister said that there were quite a few that were botched, which public hospitals were forced to complete.
“It is a taboo issue and some women don’t speak about this. Sometimes they come in, in very critical conditions, with rotting Retained Products of Conception (RPOC) and the hospital, in order to save their lives, has to intervene and do what basically is a termination of pregnancy. We have to clean up the job while somebody else would have collected the money.”
Pointing to the fact that the termination of a pregnancy is a life-threatening intervention, Dr Ramsaran said that oftentimes efforts to save women can prove to be extremely expensive, since it can require the use of flagyl injections and antibiotics among other medical requirements. There are some cases, he said too, that require women to be hospitalised for weeks, and even cause them to have to undergo a hysterectomy.
“There are lots of cases like that happening, and the frustration of infertility and the woman being disabled. There are also the concomitant issues of depression and all manner of other issues that we don’t speak on that is a part of this and don’t always come to light,” the Minister asserted.