At his press conference on July 12, President Ali made some grand claims about the progress his government has made in the area of healthcare, backing these up with a series of statistics on life expectancy and child and maternal mortality rates.
“This is the reality of the Guyana you live in. This is the result of investment the government is making, real results, real benefit, real transformation for the people of our country,” he told the press corps who went on to regurgitate these numbers without question. As one state media outlet reported, “He revealed that the country has maintained a life expectancy of 70 years old as compared to 68 years old in 2020. “Our goal is to increase life expectancy to 72 by 2026 and 75 by 2030 … “In relation to the reduction of child mortality rates, these rates he said have slowly improved and currently stand at the lowest it has ever been in Guyana’s history. Child mortality rates now stand at 13 per every 1,000 births as opposed to 19 per 1,000 births in 2020.”
Additionally, the Head of State revealed that maternal mortality has improved to its lowest ever as those rates now stand at 96 per 10,000 deliveries compared to 170 per 10,000 deliveries in 2017.”
There is quite a lot to ponder in these numbers. First it is worth noting that compiling and assessing such metrics is an extremely complex process and the single number for a particular metric and year should be considered in the context of decades of accumulated data, and that some are based on limited surveys and assumptions.
For example the metric “life expectancy at birth” is calculated by “the number of years a newborn infant would live if prevailing patterns of mortality at the time of its birth were to stay the same throughout its life.”
In other words this is really quite speculative as it involves peering into the future to as far out as 2090 as to how long an infant born in 2020 in Guyana might live. So it is unclear how the President can claim any credit for this so-called improvement. In fact the UN World Population Prospects 2022 shows a life expectancy rate for an infant born in Guyana in 2022 at 65.98 as compared to 68.48 in 2020. A person born in 1994 might expect to live to 63.7. Of course we would not care to suggest that this incremental improvement shows how little progress successive governments have made in improving the health of their citizens in the past 30 years even as the average for the Caribbean has increased from 67.48 to 72.69. And just to emphasise, the data for the UN World Population Prospects 2022 report is based in part on the 2006-2007 UNICEF Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) and on the MICS 2019/2020 which is yet to be published although available to the government for over a year. Apparently such statistics are top secret.
Similarly when it comes to the infant mortality rate one cannot help but be confused by the President’s claim of a rate of 13 per every 1,000 births as opposed to 19 per 1,000 births in 2020. After all, he held his press conference in mid-July so any statistics for this year would cover just a few months. The UN World Population Prospects 2022 shows an “Infant mortality rate, for both sexes combined (infant deaths per 1,000 live births)” of 23.55 for 2022.
Finally the President claimed that the maternal mortality rate (MMR) has improved to its lowest ever as those rates now stand at 96 per 10,000 deliveries in 2023 compared to 170 per 10,000 deliveries in 2017.
MMR is defined as “the number of deaths due to maternal causes relative to the number of live births occurring during a given period of time, usually a calendar year.” In 2010 Guyana had 280 per 10,000 live births and the President was correct that the rate was 170 in 2017. However to quote the rate of 96 for this year with less than a few months passed? It seems odd and not in keeping with the small improvements associated with such statistics. Also the World Bank Maternal Mortality Ratio (modeled estimate, per 100,000 live births) (based on data from WHO, UNICEF, UNFPA, World Bank Group, and UNDESA/Population Division. Trends in Maternal Mortality 2000 to 2020. Geneva) shows a rate of 110 per 100,000 births in 2019.
So like most statistics it’s a smorgasbord and one naturally open to manipulation. There might be an argument to claim credit for what are decades-long improvements but these are often not results of anything politicians do. Just look at the declining life expectancy rate of Americans mostly due to poor diets and an increasingly sedentary lifestyle. It has resulted in an obesity rate of 41.9% as of 2017. And to take this example it may well be that as Guyanese become more affluent and start eating more junk food, obesity (and diabetes) also rises and life expectancy declines. Alcohol and drug abuse which is hard for any government to regulate are also major factors in life expectancy. On the other hand, politicians cannot force upon their citizens healthier lifestyles that lead to longer lives, although creating infrastructure that encourages outdoor activities – or cycle lanes for commuters – might hopefully result in improvements. Then of course there is genetics.
Declining child mortality rates here and worldwide are likely part of a virtuous cycle post World War II where more infants survive the first few years of life thanks to improved healthcare and medication, so mothers have fewer babies which is associated with lower mortality rates at birth.
To be honest these numbers for Guyana are nothing to boast about. We remain among the bottom in the Western hemisphere for these three metrics.
But the President is a numbers man. Give him a statistic and he will tweak it for political ends. He can’t help himself. The least the press can do is question where these statistics and all others come from and their accuracy on what is literally a matter of life and death.
