The international charity, Save the Children releases an annual report titled ‘State of the World’s Mothers’ in which it looks at the best and worst places in the world to be a mother. This year’s report released this week, just ahead of Mother’s Day, looks at the disparity between the rich and the poor in cities given that urbanization is rampant with millions of families around the globe moving from rural areas in search of a better life and ending up in abject urban poverty.
The report focuses mainly on heavily populated countries, most of which have more than one city. It mentions India (population 1.2 billion), Bangladesh (156 million), Cambodia (15 million), Ghana (25 million), Kenya (44 million) and Nigeria (173 million) among others as places where the poorest urban-dwelling mothers and their children face the highest risk of death from preventable causes. “In most countries, the poorest urban children are at least twice as likely to die as the richest children before their fifth birthday, and often face mortality rates well above the national average. We call this the urban disadvantage,” the report says.
The 2015 ‘State of the World’s Mothers’ report has Guyana listed at 113 on its ‘Mothers Index’, which has ranked 179 countries. As usual, among Caricom countries Guyana only places above Haiti, which comes in at 169. The Mothers Index measures countries in terms of provision of education, health care and total well-being of mothers and children; the incidence of child and maternal mortality also comes into play.
Guyana’s high rates of maternal mortality continue to be worrisome. Though the incidents are usually well ventilated and the usual expressions of outrage, shock and regret documented, there has not been any aggressive action towards curbing them – at least none that has been publicly aired. Generic official platitudes are mouthed and life goes on until another mother dies; it’s a seemingly vicious cycle.
In terms of urbanization, Guyana is in a curious position and diverse from the generalities mentioned in the 2015 ‘State of the World’s Mothers’ report. Anecdotal evidence points to urban migration ongoing throughout the 80s, 90s and even the early 2000s. Rosemary’s Lane (Tiger Bay), Sophia, Pattensen and squatting along the embankments of various city canals burgeoned during these years. However, there has since been a steady shift to suburban and rural living.
Sadly, Guyana is completely devoid of the serious statistical and social studies that would show these and other trends. Why this should be the case in a country with a population of 747,884 (2012) remains a mystery that could possibly be solved when an explanation is given for the reason why in 2015, the final results of the population census done in 2012 are still not ready.
Nevertheless, one only needs to look at the populations of Diamond and Grove on the East Bank Demerara and Parfait Harmonie on the West Bank Demerara for examples of the urban to suburban/rural shift that has been taking place. In addition, the government through the Ministry of Housing has been trumpeting its allocation of house lots to low, middle and high-income Guyanese and none of these are in the city.
While the people at Plastic City and along the trench embankments continue to live in squalid and dangerous situations, no new shanty towns have sprung up in the city or its environs in the recent past. The expectation then is that concomitant with urban to rural migration the strain on the city’s services, health care in particular, would have eased. That has not been the case.
As mentioned in this column before, there have been countless missed opportunities for careful community planning because of government’s penchant for selling house lots in areas that are undeveloped and lacking in any infrastructure. Those who pioneered the Diamond/Grove and Parfait Harmonie migrations, many of them single mothers, still recount the back-breaking work they were forced to do to. The recent developments at Diamond that the government is so fond of pointing out are mostly private sector driven and only came about after the area was populated.
The East Bank Demerara Regional Hospital at Diamond ought to have been a full-service health facility in keeping with the development in the area, as well as government’s stated policy to decentralize health services. Instead, it still lacks certain facilities and therefore must refer patients with life-threatening illness to the overrun Georgetown Public Hospital (GPH). Parfait Harmonie is still to benefit from similar facilities, while the nearby West Demerara Regional Hospital is possibly in a worse state than the Diamond facility.
Meanwhile, cramped for space, the GPH has to send patients home way before they should begin home convalescence and in the case of maternity patients, two women can be found sharing a single bed in peak birthing periods. That’s just one part of the Guyana disadvantage as regards the state of its mothers.
Yet another mystery would be why it never occurred to either this or the previous administration that a state-of-the- art clinic/hospital at either Diamond or Parfait Harmonie would have served citizens better than a specialty hospital or a Marriott. But that has become par for the course.
Mother’s Day falls just one day before a tense general election in which campaigns have been tainted by personality clashes, fear mongering and name calling among other disrespectful behaviours. The likelihood that the state of Guyana’s mothers will be given any consideration on that day—the last day to score points and win votes—is slim to none.
