Technocrats from the Ministry of Health are being armed with the knowledge and skills to respond to and combat future strains of influenza.
The Ministry of Health with the support of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) is making a deliberate attempt to strengthen the capacity of health services to detect and respond quickly to the appearance of cases of unusual severe acute respiratory infections.
On May 15, the “Surveillance of Unusual Respiratory Events” training session for healthcare professionals was held at the Bay Gardens Hotel.
Acting National Epidemiologist Dr. Gemma Chery said outbreaks of the flu can have dire implications.
“New emerging respiratory viruses can be very infectious and as a result they could cause severe diseases,” she said. “If we look back and see the number of outbreaks we’ve had and the pandemics that we’ve had we would realize that influenza viruses especially when you have immunologically naive populations, they can cause serious disease. You can have severe mortality and morbidity so we found it necessary to collaborate with the PAHO to bring together healthcare workers to strengthen their capacity to be able to detect and to be able to respond and in a very timely manner to any appearance or any occurrence of what we call unusual severe respiratory infection.”
Medical Epidemiologist from the PAHO Regional Office Influenza Surveillance Team, Dr. Myrna Charles, said health workers will obtain a wealth of knowledge and new skills.
“I am hoping that the participants will be able to clearly define what is a severe acute respiratory infection and also clearly define what an influenza-like illness case is, and with those definitions in mind and with the knowledge of how that should be processed and captured they will also be able to detect and know the process for informing the Ministry and country on any typical or novel infection that might occur.”
The National Epidemiology Unit in the Ministry of Health is in the process of implementing surveillance measures for unusual respiratory events.
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