Jamaica must ‘walk and chew gum at the same time’

WITH THE end of the COVID-19 pandemic now in sight, Jamaica is being urged to invest in its frontline heathcare system to strengthen its capacity to respond to existing and future health threats.

The World Health Organization reported that last week the number of weekly reported deaths from COVID-19 plunged to its lowest since March 2020.

There have been 3,288 COVID-19 deaths in Jamaica and 6.52 million worldwide.

Assistant secretary for global affairs at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Loyce Pace, said surveillance and emergency management systems are absolutely essential to fight global health security risks.

The rising health security risk is being fuelled by the ever-increasing globalisation of travel and trade, which are enabling diseases to spread more rapidly and drug-resistant and disease-causing pathogens to develop more often.

“Without data we know nothing and we need surveillance, we need that data to understand what’s coming, how it’s changing and how well we are doing in our own response. That’s how we learnt in the first place that there was COVID-19, but also how COVID has evolved with the various variants and then finally, how health systems are being either strained or supported, how well vaccines or therapeutics are working and a number of other needs for information are met through data and surveillance,” Pace told The Gleaner.

She said the US has been able to work with the Jamaican Government over the years to help strengthen the healthcare workforce, not just frontline workers, but specialists like epidemiologists, laboratory technicians and other workers who are critical, especially in the face of global health crises.

Pace said Jamaica can also improve its response to outbreaks by working collectively with regional and international neighbours.

“Recognising that these diseases clearly have no borders and it is not a matter of shutting down and turning inward, but rather looking outward to see how we can work with one another. That’s why our relationship is so important, but also the ways that we are convening at an international level to address these issues,” she explained.

Pace delivered the keynote address at the Caribbean Public Health Agency’s (CARPHA) 66th annual health research conference in Kingston on Thursday.

Meanwhile, Pace pointed out that the global focus on COVID-19 has resulted in diminished priority for other diseases like HIV being pushed to the backburner.

In July, UNAIDS reported that an estimated 14,000 people in the Caribbean region contracted HIV last year at a rate of 270 new infections each week.

Globally, approximately 1.5 million new infections occurred in 2021, which is more than one million above the global targets.

Going forward, Pace said countries must learn to “walk and chew gum at the same time” as they deal with long-standing and emerging health situations.

“We don’t want to see these increases. We want to be sure that we are doing what we can to fight that virus as well. What we know is that we have been able to use platforms that address HIV and AIDS for COVID-19,” she remarked, adding that countries are learning from COVID-19 how to better respond to the needs of people living with HIV.

judana.murphy@gleanerjm.com