Say Yes, Winter 2004: A Golden Year for Health

In the post of Health Minister, Paediatrician Dr Recep Akdağ has taken up an immensely important challenge to ensure the health, care and development of Turkey’s 24 million children and young people. Immediately following the end of the initial phase of the Measles Immunisation Campaign, UNICEF talked to Dr Akdağ about the Ministry of Health’s (MOH) work in Maternal and Child Health, their plans for the future and his personal feelings on these issues.

We can achieve a great deal working with UNICEF in the field of Maternal and Child Health. Apart from funding resources and assistance, I believe UNICEF is the right organisation to work with in terms of developing appropriate policies.

Together with the support of UNICEF and the Ministry of National Education (MONE), our ‘Measles Immunisation Campaign’ was successful in reaching virtually all school children. The campaign went very well and we achieved quite high immunisation rates because our target group was clearly identified. At the end of the campaign we were able to document those who could not be reached so it will be easier for us to follow-up on them in the next phase.

In Turkey, Measles doesn’t occur in massive epidemics but we do see regular outbreaks. We are in both WHO and UNICEF’s European Region and both organisations have targeted the eradication of measles by 2010 -- which fully coincides with our national plans -- and I believe that we can stop further outbreaks of Measles in Turkey.

This year’s target is to repeat the same success with pre-school children that we had with the School Immunisation Days in December 2003.

During the last epidemic in 2001, close to thirty thousand children came down with Measles and only seven deaths were reported. Considering some defects in the existing recording and reporting system, we can assume that the actual number of deaths was higher than this. Measles can be especially threatening to children with malnutrition and rickets or a Vitamin D deficiency. We can eradicate Measles in the same way that we eradicated Polio. Our previous work with Polio proves that we can achieve this.

In our work with UNICEF, we should inform the public about what is going on and efforts must be made to include the media as a partner through strong communication strategies.

For example, the media contributed much to the success of the School Immunisation Days -- their role is essential in reaching every family and informing them about major child health issues.

Maternal and Child Health takes first place in our Government’s priority action plan because mothers and children constitute the most vulnerable group in terms of public health. Since taking office, I have placed specific importance on in-service training for health workers and four times more personnel have been trained than in previous years. But there is no room for complacency: we must break out of the classic structure of Maternal Child Health and adopt a fresh approach.

We are also exploring other areas: information brochures about family planning and safe motherhood will be distributed to newly married couples at the registry offices.

Our most important goal is to introduce a system through which we can monitor all pregnant women. This will involve improvements to primary health services and sending additional personnel to those areas that are under-staffed.

To improve motivation, staff in health centres who successfully expand coverage of family planning, immunisation and monitoring of expectant women and newborn babies will be entitled to a financial bonus.

During the early months of 2004, we will send 11,250 health workers and about 1,500 doctors to needy and deprived areas of the country. The new remuneration system will enable us to pay these doctors and staff over and above the usual rates. The object is to make needy areas more attractive to health workers and doctors and to better facilitate progress.

With the Family Doctors project all doctors will have closer contact and communication with their patients. Also, with this project, teams will be trained to accurately monitor pregnancies, ensure that labour wards are properly equipped and resuscitate newborns if necessary.

Another plan of ours is to offer financial support to expectant mothers when they visit health centres for regular check-ups and also for families who take their children for regular check-ups. We hope that this initiative will be especially effective in the eastern and southeastern regions. Financial support will also be offered to mothers who give birth in maternity wards. This will prove to be beneficial in several areas such as ensuring birth registration, informing families about effective methods of family planning and making contraception available free of charge.

Most infant deaths occur during the first twenty-four hours following birth so it’s important to ensure that all births at health centres are attended by trained health workers. During 2003, the Newborn Resuscitation Programme quadrupled the number of trained health workers in this area and our target for 2004 is much higher.

With 1.5 million births each year, Turkey has the highest number of newborns in Europe, yet the number of paediatricians specialising in obstetrics is quite limited so we should encourage our paediatricians to specialise in this field.

Exclusive breastfeeding during the first six months is critically important for the physical and cognitive development of children. By the end of 2004, we will make all hospitals baby-friendly and so increase rates of exclusive breastfeeding.

This year again, supplements will be offered to control iron deficiency and anaemia in infants -- a simple intervention that will do much to safeguard the mental development and coordination skills of children.

We are very keen on the issue of family planning and building public awareness in this area is critically important. Our work in this direction will need to be woven into the cultural fabric of our society.

We will achieve much in Maternal and Child Health during 2004 and 2005 and we want to see UNICEF on course with us.

At present we are working with the MONE on the development of a new curriculum for health education in schools that will offer easy-to-learn health information in a way that will be interesting to students.

Family and child training and child health are inter-related, inseparable issues and it’s essential to have teachers, as well as health workers, who are trained in the field of child health. So UNICEF’s support in child education and health is both relevant and very much appreciated. I believe that we are going to achieve great things through our partnership. I have had a great deal of respect for UNICEF since my earliest years as a doctor because I love children very much and this has had a direct influence on my career. This chat takes me back to the days, early in my career, when I was a practicing doctor in Karabük. My professional life then was entirely focused on the well-being of children.

I hope that as Minister of Health I can do much more in contributing to reductions in maternal and child deaths and the better health of this and future generations.

Read Measles Vaccination … No More Tears in this issue of Say Yes.

See our Programmes section for more details about immunisation in Turkey.

Previous page  |  Next page

ARCHIVE

Search UNICEF Turkey
   

• Advanced Search

Download this issue in pdf format. [PDF 598KB]

 * How to use RSS …