St. John: More work to be done

These comments came from Dr. Joy St. John, the Chief Medical Officer at the Ministry of Health during the opening ceremony of the National and Regional Coordination Mechanisms for Agricultural Health and Food and Safety Systems for CARIFORUM Countries Workshop yesterday morning at the Accra Beach Hotel and Spa.

 

“Work remains to be done to address the fact that many of the mechanisms are fragmented,” she said.

 

According to St. John, the SPS (Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures) Project’s actions are directed towards creating and strengthening national and regional SPS systems and explained that over the past few months, national agricultural health and food systems throughout CARIFORUM countries have been assessed and analysed by consultants from the Northern Ireland company Ltd, in an effort to determine the status of each territory’s identification of national coordination mechanisms that would be necessary for the sustainable implementation of sanitary measures, as well as to lay the foundation for regional SPS systems.

 

The Chief Medical Officer went on to note that the processing time of legislative frameworks varied at the developmental phases which are necessary to assist with the implementation of such programmes and this leads to the coordination within sectors as well as the development of the capacity building which are all important functioning components in the success of national and regional SPS systems.

 

She mentioned that through the help of IICA, much has been achieved throughout these workshops, for example the legislation within the region where they witnessed the development of a draft model legislation of plant and animal health and food safety. She added that this was also an attempt to harmonise legislation both nationally and regionally among other things.

 

She expressed her gratitude to IICA for “being the association through which the SPS Project could be channelled to the region.”