| The importance of family planning was recently emphasised by Chief Health Visitor attached to the Georgetown Municipality, Nurse Joan Stewart, as she attempted to amplify the role of the municipal health centres.Chief Health Visitor, Nurse Joan StewartThe municipal health centres, according to her, have been offering a variety of public health services to the citizenry. “The municipal service is very important because if we were to close our doors quite a number of people will be affected. They will be displaced and would have to find other clinics to attend…This could be quite a task.”Nurse Stewart said that in excess of 5,000 persons currently access the infant clinic; more than 1,000 seek the antenatal care service while in excess of 400 visit for care and treatment per annum. All services are offered free of cost.Serving residents from Albouystown to Kingston, municipal health centres usually offer services such as maternal and child health, immunisation,Cheap Jerseys For Wholesale, pre and post natal care, Voluntary Counselling and Testing,Wholesale Jerseys Free Shipping, Visual Inspection Acetic Acid tests (cervical cancer screening),NFL Jerseys Wholesale, and health education among others.“Sometimes we see about 80 to 90 persons on consecutive days in infant clinic alone. We would have the antennal clinics in the afternoons and there would be quite a large number accessing that service too,” Nurse Stewart said.The numbers are perhaps significant, she speculated, as some of the persons who attend the health centres do not live in but rather work in the city.The municipality, according to her,Wholesale NFL Jerseys China, has been faithfully offering service in family planning though the rate of adherence still leaves much to be desired. This may very well be linked to the fact that the municipality can ill-afford to provide certain methods of contraception such as the Intra-uterine Devices (IUD). This is a form of birth control in which a small ‘T’-shaped device containing either copper or progesterone is inserted into the uterus. However, constant effort is made to refer patients to other institutions such as the Family Planning Association, the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation and the Guyana Responsible Parenthood Association, even as condoms and injections are promoted as alternative means of contraception, Nurse Stewart said.According to the nurse of more than 30 years, the message of family planning cannot be understated since the ideal situation should see a couple deciding how they will procreate rather than leaving it to chance.“Often we have women come to the clinic and when we ask if it was a planned pregnancy we hear that it wasn’t. It is not when a baby is born that you decide how you will take care of it. A baby doesn’t just come and go…it is for a lifetime so there should be some planning involved.”She stressed, though,Cheap Football Jerseys, that while health officials are in a position to advise patients, there is no way that persons could be forced to adhere to mere suggestions,Cheap Jerseys Store, even as she revealed that “sometimes for consecutive years we keep seeing the same woman coming back to antenatal clinic. This, however, doesn’t stop us from doing our duty because we just keep telling them about the importance of family planning because it really is important.” |
