ROSEAU, Dominica, CMC—Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit has called on health ministers from the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) to ensure that chronic noncommunicable diseases (CNCD) are a priority for the health agenda in the subregion.
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 regional countries must seek to deal effectively with CNCDs.
Skerrit said he has been on a “crusade” regarding 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 treating CNDCs rather than seeking to minimize, even not eliminate, contracting it, and therefore, we have to go back to the basics of primary health care”.
Skeritt said that as countries develop and the population gains much more access to funding, “they go to their private physicians and bypass 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 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 ailment is wrongly placed. The Ministry of Health has a role to play, and the hospitals have a role to play, but we, as individuals and the wider society, 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 have to provide greater education honestly…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 OECS’s Pooled Procurement of medicines has served the subgrouping 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 more significant development of the health systems in the subregion.
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