Over 11,000 first and second-year nursery children have been screened for underlying health conditions as part of the Ministry of Health’s Comprehensive Child and Young Health Programme (CYHP).
The ministry has screened 7,995 first-year nursery children with 5,000 remaining to be screened. Additionally, 3,210 second-year nursery children have been screened, and another 10,000 are yet to be screened.
Minister of Health, Dr Frank Anthony provided these statistics at the ministry’s year-end press conference held at Brickdam, Georgetown to highlight the numerous successes in the health sector.
The CYHP initiative aims to screen each child for hearing, dental, and general health complications. After screening, the children will be provided with the necessary aid to help them improve their daily lives.
“With school health, what we’ve been doing is screening children going into school and this screening involves a general check-up and we would check the child’s eye to make sure that they’re seeing properly and if they need spectacles to correct that,” the health minister pointed out.
The CYHP programme has been established in collaboration with the Ministry of Education and seeks to ensure that children undergo preventative checkups to detect any underlying illness or conditions. It is part of a holistic approach undertaken by the ministry to stem the high number of chronic non-communicable diseases in Guyana.
The CYHP programme is being supported by the Mount Sinai Health System and Hess Corporation, who have donated equipment and materials towards the initiative.
The ministry intends to screen 27,000 nursery-level children after which it will be expanded to the primary and secondary levels.
“We have started this year; we started with nursery [and] next year we will we’re going to complete nursery and we’ll start with primary,” the minister relayed.
A unit in the ministry has been established to monitor the CYHP programme’s implementation. (Extracted and modified from the Department of Public Information)
