Saint Lucia: Health Ministry provides IPC Training for Choiseul caregivers

Saint Lucia: The Bureau of Health Education within the Ministry of Health, Wellness and Elderly Affairs has received support through the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) to ensure continued efforts at COVID-19 infection prevention and control in communities. One component of this support entails conducting a series of training seminars with key partners in communities.

One of the targeted partners is the Home Help Caregivers. The Choiseul Caregivers were recently provided with this training. They were equipped with the skills and knowledge to properly undertake infection prevention and control measures in providing care to their elderly and home-bound clientele to ensure their duties are performed safely.

Health Educator in the Bureau of Health Education Louisa Wilson says there is a need to strengthen the caregivers’ knowledge of infection prevention so as to protect themselves and their clients from viruses and infections.

“The reason why we doing this training session is that we want to continue emphasizing infection prevention and control measures as it relates to COVID-19. We also want to teach our participants healthy living lifestyles, and also we want to ensure that they continue living healthy lifestyles at home and also impact their community members as well as family members by teaching them about healthy lifestyles. They work with high-risk groups; these are the elderly and persons with disability. As we all know, these persons have underlying medical health conditions. These persons, by teaching them, can better impact the lives of these persons who are high risk,” stated Fernelle Neptune, Minister of Health.

Wilson says it is her hope that the knowledge gained from this training will impact the lives of the caregivers and that of their clients.

She added, “One of the things that we really want them to learn is to continue practising infection prevention and control measures as it relates to COVID-19. We want them to continue practising the cleaning and disinfecting methods at home, at the person’s home they are taking care. Also, we are introducing to them the chronic disease self-management program where they can learn a little bit more about chronic diseases and how to cope with their clients, and it will be better.”

The training focused on areas such as hand washing, mask-wearing, sanitation, nutrition and a healthy lifestyle.

This training will also benefit other infection prevention and control programmes, including strengthening our response to the threat of Monkeypox.