(CARICOM Secretariat, Turkeyen, Greater Georgetown, Guyana) The urgency of a strategic plan of action to respond to the rapid rate of increase in Chronic Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) in the Caribbean has been underscored by several health officials and experts at a two-day workshop which opened in Barbados on Tuesday.
Organised by the CARICOM Secretariat in tandem with the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO) with support from Spain, the workshop brings together regional NCD focal points to fine-tune a draft regional Strategic plan on Non-Communicable Disease Prevention Control for the Caribbean.
At the opening ceremony, Chairman of the Healthy Caribbean Coalition, Professor Trevor Hassell told participants at the workshop that the issue of chronic NCDs was more a societal than a medical one and as such it was of critical importance to involve Civil Society in a major way, if the region were to make any kind of significant dent in controlling NCDs.
“It is imperative that we do not only engage in constructive discussions but that we get the plan completed and good to go,” he asserted.
In this context therefore, he expressed pleasure at the involvement of the Healthy Caribbean Coalition in the fine-tuning of the draft strategic plan and pledged his organisation’s commitment to ensuring the completion and implementation of the strategic plan of action.
PAHO Caribbean Programme Coordinator, Dr Bernadette Theodore-Gandi in her opening remarks to the workshop stressed the need for the plan to be completed, noting that it was not only a mandate of CARICOM Heads of Government but that it was absolutely necessary for the effective implementation of phase three of the Caribbean Cooperation in Health project (CCH III).
The regional strategic plan on NCD, she said, was absolutely necessary before the end of December 2009 and urged participants to put their heads to the ground to ensure that it was completed by the end of the workshop.
Meanwhile, Barbados Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Joy St John in encouraging participants to make sound contribution to the completion of the document, noted that it was “an opportunity of a lifetime to make a tremendous impact on thousands of lives across the Caribbean…” and also to produce a document that would be carefully scrutinised and considered globally as a model and a best practice in responding to chronic NCDs.
The draft strategic plan, developed after a comprehensive consultative process, examines components crucial to curtailing the epidemic of Chronic NCDs in the Caribbean. These include risk factor reduction, health promotion, surveillance, disease management, public policy, advocacy, communications and patient education and programme management.
The workshop, facilitated by CARICOM Consultant on Disease Prevention Control, Dr Alafia Samuels, is a response to the Port-of-Spain Declaration which outlined 15-actionable points to stem the tide of Chronic Non-Communicable Diseases in the Caribbean. One of those tenets involves the development of a strategic plan of action to respond appropriately to NCDs.
