BO­BIE-LEE DIXON

(bo­bie-lee.dixon@guardian.co.tt)

Those with un­der­ly­ing con­di­tions can heap the num­ber of COVID-19 cas­es and as a re­sult every ef­fort must be tak­en to pro­tect this group most vul­ner­a­ble in the fight against the nov­el coro­n­avirus.

This was the rea­son­ing of Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion’s (PA­HO) di­rec­tor, Caris­sa Eti­enne, as she spoke yes­ter­day dur­ing a live vir­tu­al press brief­ing streamed from its head­quar­ters in Wash­ing­ton, on PA­HO's re­sponse to the pan­dem­ic and the evolv­ing sit­u­a­tion of the virus in the Amer­i­c­as.

Eti­enne said care was to be in­ten­si­fied amongst this group as more than 2.4 mil­lion cas­es and over 143,000 deaths have made the Amer­i­c­as the epi­cen­ter of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

“We are par­tic­u­lar­ly con­cerned that the num­ber of new cas­es re­port­ed last week in Brazil was the high­est for a sev­en-day pe­ri­od, since the out­break be­gan. Both Pe­ru and Chile are al­so re­port­ing a high in­ci­dence,” said Eti­enne.

Pre-COVID-19, re­search re­vealed 81 per­cent of all deaths in the re­gion of the Amer­i­c­as re­sult­ed from NCDs. Thir­ty-nine per cent of these pre­ma­ture deaths oc­curred in age groups be­neath 70.

She warned for most coun­tries in the Amer­i­c­as, now was not the time to re­lax re­stric­tions or scale back pre­ven­tive strate­gies rather it was time to stay strong, re­main vig­i­lant and ag­gres­sive­ly im­ple­ment proven pub­lic health mea­sures.

In her de­liv­ery she re­vealed per­sons with di­a­betes were twice as like­ly to have se­vere dis­ease or die, while 28 per cent of can­cer pa­tients who con­tract­ed COVID-19 died, com­pared with 2 per­cent of over­all pa­tients.

She added smok­ing al­so in­creased the chance of se­vere dis­ease from COVID-19.

“We have nev­er seen such a dead­ly re­la­tion­ship be­tween an in­fec­tious dis­ease and Non-Com­mu­ni­ca­ble Dis­eases (NCDs). Some of the da­ta are tru­ly alarm­ing, es­pe­cial­ly for our re­gion, where NCDs are per­va­sive,” Eti­enne said.

She con­tin­ued, “We need ag­gres­sive pre­ven­tive mea­sures to pro­tect peo­ple with di­a­betes, res­pi­ra­to­ry and car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­eases from the new coro­n­avirus.”

It was even a more wor­ry­ing is­sue about this group ac­cord­ing to Eti­enne as with the fear and so­cial read­just­ments forced by COVID-19, such as stay at home mea­sures and dis­rup­tion in health ser­vices many have not been vis­it­ing clin­ics as well as ac­cess to re­nal dial­y­sis, can­cer care and crit­i­cal treat­ment for NCDs pa­tients have been low­ered as in some in­stances many health work­ers who nor­mal­ly pro­vide care for peo­ple with chron­ic dis­ease have been redi­rect­ed to the COVID-19 re­sponse, ad­verse­ly im­pact­ing the time­ly di­ag­no­sis and treat­ment of NCDs.

Eti­enne said it was the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of coun­tries to find a way to en­sure that sup­ply chains for es­sen­tial NCD med­i­cines were pro­tect­ed and con­tin­ued to func­tion ef­fi­cient­ly, with the main fo­cus be­ing get­ting them to the peo­ple in dire need of them.

Speak­ing on im­pro­vised meth­ods in en­sur­ing care is met for NCD pa­tients, Eti­enne point­ed to the role of telemed­i­cine many coun­tries have been util­is­ing to arrange and keep pa­tient and doc­tor ap­point­ments.

“PA­HO is work­ing with coun­tries in the re­gion and pro­vid­ing guid­ance to help plan and im­ple­ment these mea­sures. As cas­es con­tin­ue to rise in our re­gion, our ef­forts to pro­tect those with un­der­ly­ing con­di­tions must in­ten­si­fy.” she re­it­er­at­ed.