Prime Minister announces region’s plans to focus on health care in Haiti

The Caribbean Community (CARICOM) has established a primary healthcare programme and intends to construct a hospital in Haiti, as part of recovery efforts from a 7.0 magnitude earthquake in January.

This programme, to be funded by the CARICOM member Governments, will begin on March 6, 2010.

A CARICOM delegation led by the Chairman, Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit, travelled to Haiti on the weekend where proposals were made to address the primary healthcare challenges that Haiti is currently faced with.

The delegation comprised of special representatives of Heads of CARICOM for Haiti, Jamaica’s former Prime Minister P.J Patterson, Secretary-General of CARICOM Edwin Carrington and head of the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Response Agency (CDERA) Jerry Collymore.

Their main mission was to present Patterson to Haiti’s President René Préval and the Government on his appointment to assist Haiti with international relief. Discussions were also held with President Préval on ways in which CARICOM can assist Haiti.

“Post the search and rescue relief exercise you would need to ensure that the primary healthcare situation in Haiti is stabilised and you don’t have an outbreak of any other communicable diseases there,” Skerrit explained at a press briefing at the Financial Centre this afternoon.

The Haitian Government is expected to assist CARICOM in identifying a location for the hospital. In addition, they have approved the plan for a mobile hospital to be attached to the hospital. According to Skerrit, it will be used to travel to persons who have little access to medical care in Haiti’s rural communities.

The first Skerrit-led delegation to Haiti was unsuccessful. A plane transporting the delegation  could not land in the airport because of the number of flights transporting relief supplies.

According to Prime Minister Skerrit, CARICOM is prepared to provide Haiti with technical assistance in governance, education, environment and the rebuilding of its public service. PM Skerrit recalled a number Government buildings being destroyed.

“All the files and documents of Government have been destroyed. So it’s a very serious state of affairs for the public service in Haiti…” he noted.

“CARICOM has a task force in Haiti with most of those deployed coming from the Jamaica Defense Force. Two Dominican police officers are also assisting in recovery efforts.

“What the CARICOM Force has been able to do is to go into communities where the rest of the international community has not been able to go. So persons were in fact saying that the first time they received medical care was when the CARICOM personnel came in there. So we want to continue that presence,” Skerrit explained during today’s press conference.

Some three weeks after the major earthquake, Haiti is still challenged with the lack of coordination in its relief efforts. President Préval has indicated that he needs help with coordination, and the country still needs 200,000 tents to house about a million homeless people, Skerrit recognised.

“The challenge Haiti has is the lack of coordination of the relief because almost every institution is making a pitch to lead the coordination exercise and CARICOM’s view is that at every stage Haiti should provide the leadership in respect to what it is the Haitian people want for themselves and how do you work with them to achieve their own desired objectives … we have to ensure that every step of the way the sovereignty of Haiti is maintain and upheld and CARICOM will definitely assist in that,” PM Skerrit noted.