The Pan American Health Organ- isation (PAHO) and World Health Organisation (WHO) Country Representative Dr Beverley Barnett has praised the Medicine Extended Programme (Medex Programme), which facilitates access to basic quality health services across the country.
“To date, the programme has produced about 600 Medex who work in the 10 administrative regions of Guyana and they play a crucial role in primary health care,” Barnett said on Monday at the start of a three-day seminar held by PAHO/WHO in collaboration with the Ministry of Health’s Regional Health Services Department.
The conference is being held under the theme ‘Initiating Continuing Medical Education (CME) for Medex,’ the Government Information Agency said.
Barnett highlighted the programme’s importance in the healthy system, quoting from the Medex Act of 1978 which states, “that Medex may in particular, advise members of the public on the promotion of health generally and prevention of disease, administer pre-natal and post-natal care and advise members of the public on routine child care, diagnose and manage certain common ailments and identify such ailments as need referral to supervising medical practitioner or in an emergency direct it to a hospital and perform normal deliveries of babies and identify abnormalities which need to be referred to the supervising medical practitioner or to a hospital.”
Dr Barnett added that Universal Health Coverage is increasingly being discussed at the global, regional, sub-regional and national levels, in an effort to reduce health inequities which are un-just, un-fair and, goods and facilities that hinder the advancement of the achievement of the millennium development goals and the vision of health for all.
In his address, Director, Health Services Education, Noel Holder said that whilst medexes are utilised in the district hospitals, their main focus is in the primary health care setting in the public health sector. “You have got to make sure that what you do and the clients with whom you are interfacing with at the community or public health level, they receive the level of care for which you are able to give… you should be able to refer adequately to the next level where we can have the continuity of care,” Holder said.
He charged participants to be innovative in accomplishing these objectives, noting that they are often bombarded with various suggestions about how to administer care, during the course of their duties. “You have got to come to the table also with something because out there in those communities, people come up with various suggestions,” he said.
Other topics on the agenda for the seminar are customer care and occupational health and safety; package of publicly guaranteed health services; investigating an outbreak at the regional level; health information cycle; local supervision of integrated management of childhood illnesses (IMCI); emergency obstetrics and neonatal care (EmONC) assessment findings and strategies for regions 1, 7, 8, 9 and 10; basic health centre management; and developing a model for Medex CME in Hinterland Regions.
The meeting concludes today with an interactive session between participants and senior medical specialists.
