Minister of Health Senator Dr. Bernard Nottage told senators during his contribution to the budget debate on Tuesday that a review of the past two years makes it “clear that infant mortality rates are going up,” and that the medical establishment is unsure why.
Dr. Nottage said that in 2005, the infant mortality rate was 19 per thousand live births; far too high a number, he said, for a country the size of The Bahamas. He said that the ministry has brought together all its technical groups, including doctors, nurses and others to determine why the number is so high.
“Itﾒs happening at a time when we have more professionals ﾖ very competent, very well qualified ﾖ more technology, more nurses, more physicians, more spaceﾅ” he said.
“[Itﾒs happening at a time] when a lot of our people are better nourished, but there are some serious issues that are involved here which cannot be solved with the wave of a wand.”
Dr. Nottage pointed out that the medical profession is seeking to keep babies alive at a much younger age ﾖ for example, babies who “are less than two pounds in weight, and in years gone by, no attempt would have been made to keep (babies this small) alive.”
He said babies born at 20 weeks gestation are also given a fighting chance now, whereas in years gone by the age at which the profession might have tried to keep the baby alive was 28 weeks.
Dr. Nottage promised to return to the senate with answers to these questions once his team has provided them. He also promised to “indicate what strategies we will have to develop to overcome them.”
Dr. Nottage gave a litany of problems the health sector faces, one of which was the qualification of food vendors. The minister was critical of the manner in which health certificates were given to food vendors in the past.
“There has always been a regulation that if people want to sell food publicly they have to have a health certificate,” he said.
“They would go to the doctor and get a health certificate which would say something like [a doctor has] examined [the vendor] and [found the vendor] to be in good health, but without doing the necessary tests to ensure that they didnﾒt have any communicable disease, but more than that, without giving them any training in how to handle food.”
Dr. Nottage said that now, nobody can get a license to handle food ﾖ whether in the best hotels or on the side of the road ﾖ without going through a food handlerﾒs training class.
He said there are more than 30,000 people in The Bahamas who must be trained for the food handlerﾒs certificate, while the Ministry of Health trains only about 300 people per week. Addressing this situation, Dr. Nottage said, will take a whole lot of work, but is “absolutely essential.”
Dr. Nottage also sought to enlist senators in his “Healthy Lifestyles Initiative,” handing out health passports and challenging senators to begin a “Healthy Dozen Club.” He asked the senators to submit to an evaluation and then allow a team from the ministry to follow their progress over the next year and “set the pace for the rest of the country.”
By: Quincy Parker, The Bahama Journal
