ST. GEORGE’S, Grenada, CMC – Health Minister Phillip Telesford Monday said that a weeklong conference reviewing the activities taken by the island to deal with the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic would provide an opportunity to collect information that could result in an improvement in public health response in the eventuality of another pandemic.
“This exercise holds significant importance as it provides Grenada with an opportunity to examine and collect data necessary for enhancing its public health response system at a strategic level,” Telesford told the “COVID-19 After Action Review” stakeholders conference.
“The COVID-19 pandemic brought the entire world to a standstill, and undoubtedly, a significant number of individuals in this room this morning can vividly recall the period of the pandemic that had a profound impact on every aspect of life and our economies globally.”
Telesford said that the introduction of the virus to Grenada had an immediate effect on the country’s customary way of life, with the implementation of public health measures necessitating the prohibition of fundamental activities “like going to church the way we know it and the distances that we had to keep, the long lines at the banks, online learning (and) online meetings.
“We are still recovering…this after-action review aims to strengthen our public health response pillars, facilitate consensus building, document lessons learned, identify short-, medium- and long-term processes for improving future events including pandemic preparedness by embracing best practices, preventing errors, and strengthening health systems,” he said.
Grenada’s COVID-19 data put the island in the classification of endemic, and Chief Medical Officer Dr Shawn Charles said that the critical next steps for Grenada include the development of an infectious disease emergency plan that incorporates responses to various agents.
“Not just respiratory illness because we recognize this is important, but also the development of a health emergency center and various Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) that will be added to our multi-hazard plan and the conduct of stimulation exercises, which will be important to test the responses that we put in our plan,” he said.
“This means that we have a lot of work to do in the coming months. I know work has already started on some of these activities, and all of this is to ensure that we are ready to face any future health security events,” he told the conference.
The authorities said that the review is linked directly to the 2020 World Bank-activated Contingent Emergency Response Component (CERC) for Dominica, Grenada, and St Vincent and the Grenadines.
CERC allows for the rapid reallocation of funds from ongoing operations to cover immediate needs in a disaster or public health emergency.
The CERC was activated for Dominica, Grenada, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines under the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean (OECS) Regional Health Project, for a total of US$10 million with US$2.5 million allocated to Grenada, three million US dollars for Dominica, and US$4.5 million for St. Vincent and the Grenadines.
and then 