St Lucia: CARPHA pays courtesy call on Minister for Health, Wellness- Moses Jn Baptiste

St Lucia: The Management Team of the Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA) recently paid a courtesy call on the Minister for Health, Wellness and Elderly Affairs, Moses Jn Baptiste.

The visit provided an opportunity to discuss environmental health matters and ways in which sustainable development issues impact public health.

Executive Director of CARPHA, Dr Joy St John, said the visit would allow the team to assess the work being done at the Environmental Health and Sustainable Development department located in Saint Lucia and to highlight ways in which CARPHA can continue to provide support.

“The Environmental Health and Sustainable Development Department ensures that the work we do is truly relevant to the Caribbean. That is the outcome of the first mission. The outcome of the second mission was to interact with Saint Lucia. The Minister, the Permanent Secretary and the CMO pinpointed clear and specific goals about what Saint Lucia needs going forward.”

Moses Jn Baptiste says he is very pleased with the visit as it provided an avenue to discuss pertinent environmental health issues which can hinder human health and wellness.

“This morning, we discussed many issues relating to environmental health and how environmental health can be integrated into the public health measures and public health programmes here in Saint Lucia and the Caribbean. We also looked at the developments with respect to data and how CARPHA is re-evaluating its programmes and putting in place a number of new programmes which will help Saint Lucia and the other Caribbean countries to access data and to have quality data which will certainly help us with our discussions when it comes to public health matters.”

The team from CARPHA also met with the Chief Medical Officer, Dr Sharon Belmar-George and the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Health, Jenny Daniel.