President Dr. Irfaan Ali on Wednesday said Guyana’s health sector is showing substantial improvements based on data for some key indicators.
According to President Ali, Guyana has made some strides in reducing child mortality over the past few years.
“Child mortality has slowly improved and is now the lowest it has ever been: 13 (deaths) per 1,000 births versus 19 (deaths) per 1,000 births in 2020,” he told reporters at a press conference hosted at his Georgetown office.
Essentially, this means that fewer children are dying at a young age (between zero to five years).
Further, the President said more low-weight neonatal babies, pregnant women and new mothers are surviving.
He linked these gains to improvements in the healthcare sector and posited that the government will continue pursuing these improvements by investing more in new, modern facilities, training workers and ensuring there is a more efficient delivery of services.
In fact, he said some plans are already underway with the government funding six new regional hospitals across the country and upgrading several others.
New speciality facilities are also being developed as the government expands training programmes for nurses and other healthcare workers.
And overall, Dr. Ali believes the country can increase its life expectancy to 75 years by 2030. This expectancy refers to the average number of years a person can expect to live and usually reflects the state of a country’s health sector.
As it is now, he said Guyana’s life expectancy has increased from 68 years in 2020 to 70 years in 2023.
