HEALTH Minister, Dr. Leslie Ramsammy intends to next year pursue full implementation of the Medical Termination Act of 1995.

In a release, he said implementation of several provisions are critical to resolving teenage pregnancy, poor family planning, frequency of unwanted pregnancy and illegal termination of pregnancy and complications resulting from termination of pregnancy.

He said the ministry will focus on several areas of non-compliance with the 1995 Act to ensure a more complete and effective implementation of the Act.

These areas include pre- and post- termination counselling, provisions for medical termination of pregnancy in the public health sector, reporting of medical termination of pregnancy by practitioners from both the private and public health sectors, training doctors in manual vacuum aspiration, the functioning and membership of the Medical Termination of Pregnancy and Advisory Board and possible revision of the Act.

On pre- and post-counselling, the ministry will work towards building capacity and introduce counselling at health centres and hospitals. The counselling requirements will be enforced at both private and public health institutions, Ramsammy said.

According to Section 4 of the Act, any woman seeking treatment in relation to medical termination of her pregnancy, together with her partner, where possible, must be provided with pre- and post-counselling, and medical termination must occur only after 48 hours after a request for termination. These provisions are routinely flouted by medical institutions in the private sector, the minister said.

"Currently, the health sector does not initiate medical termination of pregnancy, although it treats significant numbers of spontaneous and incomplete abortions. I have instructed the Georgetown Public Hospital to develop a programme to provide medical termination of pregnancy as part of the public health service that it provides on behalf of the Ministry of Health," he stated.

The 1995 Act made provisions for reporting of all medical terminations by persons and facilities authorised under the Act to perform terminations.

Ramsammy said that although public health institutions have not begun providing medical termination of pregnancies as a public health service, they are unfortunately burdened with dealing with complications resulting from medical termination of pregnancy including terminations due to failed contraception, uterine evacuation secondary to incomplete abortion and uterine evacuation secondary to spontaneous absorption.

The functions of the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Board need to be reviewed and re-constituted to allow it to become more active, he said, adding that several recommendations have been made for changes to the 1995 Act.

These will be considered during the coming months, the minister said.