Minister Lawrence stresses importance of professional attitude

Jan 25, 2018 News

---

–as Ministry launches 2018 work programme with full support from partners

Parting ways with any employee who dares to obstruct the Ministry’s progressive vision is not something that Minister of

Public Health, Ms. Volda Lawrence, is opposed to. The Minister speaking at a strategic meeting, yesterday, made it clear that an unacceptable attitude towards the work of her Ministry will not be condoned.
“Some staff feel indispensable and are not carrying or exhibiting correct professional attitude,” Lawrence noted. She revealed, in her usual blunt assessment of her Ministry, “Sometimes, we want to send home a whole department but we can’t do that because of existing skills deficit in the sector which some employees are exploiting.”
In her forthright deliberation, Minister Lawrence also charged those within the Health Sciences Education Department to help produce graduates with the skills-set needed to give the Ministry greater leverage to make decisions.
But according to the Minister this should be done “without jeopardising the well-being of patients or the state of the sector as the Ministry pursues an undeviating course of health-care action.”
She assured that for 2018, there will be greater synergy among the Ministry’s seven programmes and a deliberate filtering of key and critical information to staff operating at the lower levels of the health care system. “Information must not remain at the top,” the Public Health Minister insisted.

The meeting was held at the Kingston, Georgetown Marriott Hotel. It was graced by the Diplomatic Community in Guyana whose representatives all voiced unanimous backing for the novel unveiling of the Ministry’s 2018 work programme.
During the meeting, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) was praised for its work in the mining communities to help fight HIV and AIDS. This venture was described as a “complicated and costly” intervention by Mr. Robert Natiello, Regional Coordination Officer for the Caribbean and Chief of Mission in Guyana.
He revealed how the programme reach extended to Regions One [Barima/Waini]; Seven (Cuyuni/Mazaruni); Eight (Potaro/Siparuni) and Nine (Upper Takutu/Upper Essequibo).
At the meeting, too, the United Nations Children’s Fund [UNICEF], pledged to continue its support to people living with disabilities, while International Institute for Cooperation in Agriculture [IICA] committed its support for initiatives in the area of food safety.

IICA will also back Guyana’s efforts in the Food and Drugs enterprise stressing that in addition, the agriculture agency wants to help reinforce the Public Health Ministry’s fight against anti-microbial resistance with the organisation assuring that there are “lots of funding for this.”
The global Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) also publicly stood on the side of the Public Health Ministry through its representative, Mr. Reuben Robertson, who assured Minister Lawrence; Minister within the Ministry, Dr Karen Cummings; Chief Medical Officer [CMO], Dr. Shamdeo Persaud, and Deputy CMO Dr. Karen Gordon-Boyle that the institution is backing the country’s food and nutrition security plan, particularly in the area of governance.
Robertson said, too, that the FAO will help underpin the Ministry efforts to continue pushing the health lifestyle initiative here.
Caribbean Agriculture Research Development Institute [CARDI], Representative, Mr. Cyril Roberts, said the Regional body wants to ‘ramp up’ support for the local sector highlighting particular enthusiasm for export of coconut water to the twin Island Republic of Trinidad and Tobago.
Roberts disclosed, yesterday, that “CARDI wants to help the Public Health Ministry anyway we can.”
While the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation [UNESCO] will partner with the Public Health Ministry to combat gender-based violence and for teenage pregnancy reduction, according to its representative at the meeting Ms. Patrice La Fleur, the Inter-American Development Bank [IDB] wants the Public Health Ministry to focus more strategically on data management.
“It’s just a matter of collecting data which are all around us,” Ms. Sharon Miller, the local IDB Chief of Operations, pointed out. According to her, the Ministry will be in a better place if strategies for gathering and retrieval are pursued and “a stimulating desire for data is created among sector officials.”
She said, too, that the paucity and many gaps in available data are frustrating Caribbean researchers who have been complaining perennially too about “the absence of data in the Region.”
“We have to change this,” Miller stressed.
Development Officer within the Canadian High Commission, Ms. Gina Arjoon, called for financial data to be part of the package of change to be pursued by the Health Ministry. She moreover urged the Ministry’s team to provide its strategy for Disaster Risk Management preparedness which the Canadian government wants to support.
CMO, Dr. Persaud in delivering remarks too admitted that while there are gaps in the Ministry’s data, availability has been a challenge.
Even as she took note of the overwhelming support readily available to her Ministry from the various regional and international partners, Minister Lawrence made an informal plea to them to “call a spade a spade…so we could make changes for improvement in the critical sector.”
She continued, “You can only help us when you tell us when we are not doing well.”

---

---