Focused on how much has to be done in the improvement of its sector, the Provincial Directorate of Public Health in Guantanamo has projected guidelines and carried out actions to advance in the solution of problems, aimed at achieving a superior work period in 2020 and especially better results.
This is how Dr. Roilder Romero stressed, the director of the health system in the territory, who said that for the stage the sector includes among its objectives and challenges the increase of quality services and the health and satisfaction of the population, the stability of the epidemiological situation and the reduction of mortality in children under one year, according to the development achieved by the Cuban health system.
Above all, he said, we are engaged in first-order programs such as the Mother and Child (PAMI), which closed 2019 with a mortality rate close to six per 1000 live births, an index that although decreases with respect to the previous year does not achieve purposes, only fulfilled here by the municipalities El Salvador (3.6 %) and Caimanera, with zero deaths.
About that issue, Dr. Humberto Velázquez, head of PAMI Guantanamo, said that work is being done today to achieve greater effectiveness in dispensing - aimed at prevention -, control of preconception risk, and compliance with the protocols for the care of a child year with some deficiency, and of pregnant women with biological or congenital conditions.
The doctor pointed out that Guantanamo is the province with the highest fertility in the country - although for the first time it culminates a year below six thousand births -, it is also among the highest rate of teenage pregnancies and has a high number of interruptions, phenomena that significantly affect prematurity and low birth weight.
We still have a lot to do - Velázquez said - especially in the systematic management of vulnerable groups, from primary care in the communities to determine morbidity and reduce complications, and also in attention to the infertile couple and promotional tasks of health, in favor of responsible family planning and a sexual and reproductive education.
Mentioning the positive facts, the head of the section that attends the PAMI in Guantanamo highlighted the implementation of a control strategy in the main city, which has to be generalized - he said-, because it allowed this municipality to stabilize and close the year with better results, that even when they did not fulfill the purposes they managed to drag the province to an indicator better than that of the previous stage.
We have all the tools - it meant - what we need is to use them effectively. In 2020, we proposed a more efficient work system and for this the command posts are already in operation, led by the Health directive on a daily basis, for coordination with all municipalities, which allows greater control, especially of pregnant women at risk.
Another of the areas that especially occupy the Guantanamo Health Directorate today is the confrontation with the levels of infestation by Aedes aegypti, with more comprehensive and sustainable methods, and in another order the Drug Program, hit by the US blockade against Cuba and on which they improve measures to mitigate the negative impact of low coverage.
In a meeting with the health sector Alis Azahares, Deputy Governor of the province referred to the permanent accompaniment of the Government to the sector and recalled that the largest budget allocated in the territory and in Cuba is aimed at the development of this field.
There are material limitations but we maintain, as strength, professional and human quality, Azahares said and warned that many times some difficulties are resolved from the work system, and called to give it another vitality, renewing methods, with a greater link with the base and everyone with the community.