Update on Five-year Child and Maternal Health and Well-being Strategy and Action Plan

12 Dr Wan Rizal asked the Minister for Health whether he can provide an update on the development and implementation of the five-year Child and Maternal Health and Well-being Strategy and Action Plan.

The Senior Minister of State for Health (Dr Janil Puthucheary) (for the Minister for Health): Mr Speaker, the Taskforce on Child and Maternal Health and Well-being was set up by MOH early last year to oversee the development and implementation of a five-year Strategy and Action Plan. The strategy will focus on supporting women and their children to attain good health and well-being, leading to a healthier next generation.

The efforts of the Taskforce are organised along three main thrusts. First, we are focusing on translating evidence-based findings into policies and programmes to address health risks. We will also go further upstream, as early as the pre-conception phase, in implementing preventive health efforts for women and children. Second, we are reviewing service delivery for children and their families to minimise the number of touch points that our citizens need to navigate across services. And third, we are reviewing our approaches to engage stakeholders and the public and to hear what matters most to them and to ensure that our messages and support to them stay relevant.

Over the past year, the Taskforce, comprising members from the public, private and academic sectors, has conducted focus group discussions with parents, parents-to-be and caregivers. We have also conducted some 20 site visits and engagement sessions with frontline officers from across the health, social and education domains to better understand what matters most to children and their families.

The Taskforce is reviewing and finalising its recommendations for the Strategy and we will be announcing more details soon.

Mr Speaker: Dr Wan Rizal.

Dr Wan Rizal (Jalan Besar): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I thank the Senior Minister of State Janil for sharing with us the plans for this. One of my supplementary questions will be the involvement of the paternal part in this programme. We do understand that although this programme looks into child and maternal health, we do see the importance of others in this role. I hope that we can see more inclusion of fathers in the programme and in other programmes; and also, including the grandparents.

My second supplementary question is on screening as part of this programme. With more screening, inevitably, we will have more interventions, most probably. When we talk about intervention, I would think that there is a need for the task force to engage the workplaces. Are these in place? These will help the provision of workplace support for mothers in the future.

Dr Janil Puthucheary: Sir, I thank Dr Wan Rizal for his questions. For the first question which is paternal and grandparent involvement, the answer is yes. We are looking at this from a mother and child view, with respect to the science, because that is really where we have the research in terms of pre-conception, what happens in pregnancy, early neo-natal period. But getting things done, the service delivery kind of programmes and activities are really from a family-centric point of view. And so, the whole family is indeed encouraged to join in, to be part of this and to come along the journey.

I hope that the fathers out there do not need a special invitation with their name. We are asking the whole family to turn up. So, as the father, he is part of the family, please come and get involved in looking after the young child and the young child's mother, and helping to support them through the journey. The grandparents are naturally involved in very much part of the caregiving in our society. So, we take a family-centric view to involve the whole family.

For the actual strategies around screening and interventions, these are still being studied and we have to look to see where we will implement programmes and activities. We will make the announcement in due course. But indeed, getting the right tools to make sure the interventions are effective are going to be important. We will be studying this.