ROSEAU, Dominica, Oct 8, CMC – Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit has called on health ministers from the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) to ensure that make chronic non communicable diseases (CNCD) a priority for the health agenda in the sub-region.
Addressing the opening of the 10th OECS Council of Ministers of Health and the 37th Pooled Procurement Services board meeting in Portsmouth, north of here on Monday night, Skerrit said it is imperative for regional countries to seek to deal effectively with CNCDs.
Skerrit said he has been on a “crusade” in respect to CNDCs and “that if we thought that COVID was a major threat to us, I believe and our economic viability. I believe we are spending too much time on treating CNDCs rather than seeking to minimise, even not eliminate contracting it and therefore we have to go back to the basics of primary health care”.
Skeritt said as countries develop and the population gain much more access to funding “they go to their private physicians and by-pass health centers in the rural communities where they could get equally the same health care at no cost to them.
“We have to find a way of reversing that attitude towards health care. Everybody rushes to the tertiary and secondary health care facilities…and there has to be greater advocacy, regionally and even globally on the importance of primary health care,” Skerrit told the ceremony.
He told the audience that “there is an emergency, globally, not only in the Caribbean to fight CNDCs and to encourage wellness among citizens.
“The notion that the ministry of health of any OECS country can cure your aliment is wrongly placed. The ministry of health has a role to play, the hospitals have a role to play, but we as individuals and the wider society we have a role to take care of ourselves, and I believe more of that needs to be said to our citizens.
“You hear people complaining about every hospital in the OECS and the Caribbean, but we really have to honestly provide greater education…we are not speaking enough to the society and it should not be left to politicians like me to be advocating about CNDCs and the need t take care of ourselves,” Skerrit added.
The OECS groups the islands of Antigua and Barbuda Dominica, Grenada, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, St. Kitts-Nevis, Montserrat, the British Virgin Islands and Anguilla
The incoming chairman of the OECS Council of Ministers of Health, Dominica’s Cassani Laville, said the Pooled Procurement of medicines which exist in the OECS has served the sub grouping well.
“We are confident that our collaboration will continue to strengthen moving forward. Small island Developing States benefit immensely from this facility as it enables fair and transparent procurement processes without straining our limited resources”.
He said the partnership with the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) allows for greater development of the health systems in the subregion.
CMC/gr/ir/2024