GOV’T CAN DO BETTER

There is some improvement that can be made with respect to how the Governmental stakeholders handled the sewage crisis and its resulting health issues that occurred on the South Coast of this island.

This is the opinion of the Pan-American Health Organisation (PAHO) Consultant on Risk Communication and Health Promotion, Dr. Ljubica Latinovic who spoke with the media during the break of the Risk Communications Training Session held for stakeholders in the health care sector yesterday at the Diabetes Foundation of Barbados, Warrens.

She stated that one of the issues in this regard however, had to do with the fact that the Ministry of Health is responsible for the handling of many different health
issues and so responding to each and every health crisis is not always an easy task.

“We think that it needs a little bit of improvement… The Ministry of Health as such as a Governmental agency doesn’t only deal with one health problem. They have a lot of health problems in their mind. So they need to be everywhere somehow and to have a response for everything,” it was explained.

When queried as to which areas she felt could have been addressed better, she stated that the structuring and response time are probably areas that they could improve on.

“Possibly the structuring and the planning of the response. That would be one of the issues that we really need to tackle a little bit more, to be ready when we have an emergency and how basically to deal with the different stakeholders, and how to respond innecessity with the stakeholders and the media as well in that sense.”

Dr. Latinovic stated that the Ministry of Health invited her here to help them do precisely this.

“PAHO has offered the Ministry of Health aid and support and technical advice for any kind of health emergency that the country can present and we are also helping the country to have the best risk communication response, in the case of the situation that is presenting now with the problem with the South Coast,” she said.

To date, they have conducted assessments of the current South Coast situation and have also met with the relevant stakeholders in the Ministry of Health such as the Chief Medical Officer and the technical officers, stated the PAHO Consultant.

“Yes, of course we did assessments. Last week we had a very productive meeting with the Ministry, with the technical people, also with the CMO and other persons there and we did the plan on how to deal with the information, how to train the officers, the technical persons, as well as the medical officers in risk communication and the basics of health communication, so that they can deal better with the situation that they are facing, ” she stated.