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Guyana gets extension to implement IHR-recommended capacity

Aug 30, 2012 News

Having signed unto the World Health Organisation (WHO)’s International Health Regulation (IHR) of 2005, the local Ministry of Health was this year expected to be in a better position to ensure that its surveillance capacity is at its optimum.
However, more work is yet to be done in this regard, as according to Chief Medical Officer (CMO), Dr Shamdeo Persaud, “we have gotten an extension to develop all our systems and capacities. In fact WHO has given us an extension up to 2014 to comply with all of the requirements”.
With the support of WHO, some 194 countries have been implementing global rules to enhance national, regional and global public health security through the IHR. Key milestones for the countries had included the assessment of their surveillance and response capacities and the development and implementation of plans of action to ensure these core capacities are functioning by 2012.
Presently, the local Health Ministry is working with all its ports of entries to ensure that they are IHR-compliant, meaning they must have basic sanitary control measures in place. These ports, Dr Persaud explained, must be able to respond to events in terms of providing some protection to aircraft or vessels entering Guyana’s territory with infectious goods, persons or other items. In essence, the CMO noted that the onus is on the health system to ensure that there are measures in place to contain such situations so that infections are not transmitted to the wider population.
Attempts to build stronger surveillance systems locally are seriously afoot, in the face of a number of health threats existing in the Region, among them cholera. Even the threat of the emergence of various flu strains must be carefully monitored, Dr Persaud said, as he revealed that the Pan American Health Organisation and the World Health Organisation are looking carefully at the situation in Mexico and other health situations in South East Asia. Cuba earlier this year had reported an outbreak of Cholera, with Mexico expressing immense concern about its own safety. Mexico’s Health Ministry had by extension issued a sanitary alert, calling on airport employees to strengthen controls on travellers from Cuba and carefully review the sanitary documentation of each flight.
In fact concerns have left PAHO and WHO closely looking at the different viruses that seem to be spreading very rapidly, particularly among birds, since according to Dr Persaud, “this is always an area that we have to pay more attention to.”
In Guyana there are currently two defined periods of influenza and the CMO stated that, “even though we’re just about going out of the first we do expect that we will see another upsurge again later on this year.”  The two influenza periods are usually during the first quarter of the year and sometime towards June-July.
Diarrhoea which is also a concern is currently at its low season, Dr Persaud said. Diarrhoeal seasons are normally recorded during March-April and again around the period November-December.
“These are the kinds of patterns that we’ve noticed over the last five years or so,” the CMO noted, as he amplified the Ministry’s surveillance scope.

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