Govt launches training programmes targeting Region Two mid-wives, medical personnel

The government, through the Ministry of Health, has officially launched two training programmes targeting the mid-wives and medical professionals at Suddie Hospital in Region Two. 

The programmes are for the Medical Laboratory Technicians while another training will be undertaken in Post Basic Midwifery.

Minister of Health Dr Frank Anthony urged the trainees to use the knowledge to the benefit to patients, especially by advising them on taking the HPV vaccination to prevent cervical cancer, to screen for breast cancer, and to advise mothers on diet and nutrition etc.

“For the midwives, you are in a very important position. We want every mother that comes to us to have a certain set of basic things which includes things like having an ultrasound so that we could understand what is happening with the baby”, he said.

The minister said that government hopes the training programme will have an impact on the timely provision of prenatal and postnatal care.

“We want to make sure that mother save a number of tests to be done whether in the first trimester, second trimester, third trimester, because that is important for us to monitor both the mother’s health and the child’s health and that’s extremely important,” Minister Anthony stated.

He urged the students to further their studies and offered to pay for any course or courses they would like to study through Coursera.

Deputy Director for Health Sciences Division in the Ministry of Health, Chandrawattie Persaud expressed her confidence that the students will be successful in their studies and more training opportunities could be added in the region. 

“More than 100 persons would have applied to be on the MLT training programme…that’s how much people in region 2 want a career in health. So apart from this, definitely we would engage those students and give them other opportunities for other training programmes and that alone signal to us that we need to have more decentralized programmes in Region Two because the demand is here and the persons are qualified,” Persaud stated.

Meanwhile, Regional Health Officer Dr Ranjeev Singh noted that the investments in training in the region will the human resource capacity in the region.

“I want to urge you that whatever you learnt, in these courses that you use them and you apply them upon our patients to make sure that our ultimate goal is to satisfy our patients. Our goal is to make sure that we train adequate staff to bridge that gap. Our goal is to make sure that our staff are trained to handle our patients with care, to make sure that we don’t not put strain on the existing human resource that we have but to make sure that we relieve them of that strain,” he said.