The Unit­ed King­dom is giv­ing US$3.8 mil­lion to the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (PA­HO) to help eight coun­tries of the Caribbean con­tain the spread of the nov­el coro­n­avirus dis­ease (COVID-19) and mit­i­gate its im­pact on their pop­u­la­tions.

The ben­e­fi­cia­ry Caribbean states are An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, Be­lize, Do­mini­ca, Grena­da, Guyana, Ja­maica, Saint Lu­cia, and Saint Vin­cent and the Grenadines.

The fi­nan­cial con­tri­bu­tion from the UK’s De­part­ment for In­ter­na­tion­al De­vel­op­ment (DFID) is in ad­di­tion to the US$9.9 mil­lion al­ready pro­vid­ed by the UK Gov­ern­ment via the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (WHO) al­lo­ca­tions, to sup­port PA­HO’s re­sponse strat­e­gy to COVID-19 in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean, as out­lined in its Donor Ap­peal. The funds from DFID will as­sist Caribbean coun­tries to ac­cess crit­i­cal med­ical equip­ment and oth­er ur­gent sup­plies for the im­me­di­ate health re­sponse to COVID-19.

PA­HO Di­rec­tor Dr Caris­sa Eti­enne ex­plains the ob­jec­tive of the six-month project is to help save lives and re­duce hu­man-to-hu­man trans­mis­sion of the virus, in­clud­ing sec­ondary in­fec­tions in health­care set­tings, through re-or­ga­ni­za­tion of health ser­vices and the im­ple­men­ta­tion of In­fec­tion Pre­ven­tion and Con­trol mea­sures. It al­so aims to en­sure ear­ly de­tec­tion of COVID-19 cas­es by strength­en­ing ex­ist­ing sur­veil­lance sys­tems and scal­ing up lab­o­ra­to­ry ca­pac­i­ty. She says part of the strat­e­gy will al­so im­prove the com­mu­ni­ca­tion of clear and trans­par­ent pub­lic health in­for­ma­tion about risks and pro­tec­tive mea­sures to pop­u­la­tions on the is­lands.

“PA­HO very much ap­pre­ci­ates the strong part­ner­ship and long-stand­ing sup­port of the Gov­ern­ment of the Unit­ed King­dom. We are grate­ful to UK DFID for help­ing Caribbean small is­land de­vel­op­ing states com­bat the se­ri­ous COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and ad­dress the unique chal­lenges they are fac­ing,” she said.

Coun­try Di­rec­tor for the UK DFID in the Caribbean, Ste­fan Kos­soff, reaf­firmed the UK Gov­ern­ment’s com­mit­ment to sup­port­ing its Caribbean friends and part­ners through this cri­sis. 

“We all face un­prece­dent­ed chal­lenges with COVID19, and UK as­sis­tance is sup­port­ing vul­ner­a­ble health sys­tems in the Caribbean and across the world—to save lives, pro­tect vi­tal ser­vices and re­duce the risk of fu­ture waves of in­fec­tion glob­al­ly,” he not­ed. “In ad­di­tion to our mul­ti-mil­lion com­mit­ment for the de­vel­op­ment of a pos­si­ble vac­cine, this di­rect re­gion­al sup­port will help Caribbean coun­tries to cope with the coro­n­avirus cri­sis, boost their health­care ef­forts and pro­tect the most vul­ner­a­ble. The UK stands with the peo­ple of the Caribbean in these dif­fi­cult times.”

The do­na­tion from the UK Gov­ern­ment al­so will con­tribute to the UN’s Mul­ti-Sec­toral Re­sponse Plan for the East­ern Caribbean, launched on 30 April 2020. That plan aims to sup­port coun­tries in the East­ern Caribbean to scale-up their re­spec­tive na­tion­al ac­tions to re­spond to COVID-19 through a mul­ti-di­men­sion­al ap­proach.

With funds from DFID, PA­HO in­tends to sup­port a co­her­ent pub­lic health re­sponse that ad­dress­es the most press­ing needs of the ben­e­fit­ting coun­tries and en­sure strong co­or­di­na­tion and man­age­ment as well as in­for­ma­tion shar­ing arrange­ments with oth­er UN and re­gion­al/bi­lat­er­al agen­cies to max­i­mize im­pact and elim­i­nate po­ten­tial du­pli­ca­tion.

PA­HO, as the spe­cial­ized health agency in the Amer­i­c­as and the Re­gion­al Of­fice of WHO, is pro­vid­ing crit­i­cal lead­er­ship, co­or­di­na­tion and as­sis­tance to fight the spread of COVID-19, save lives, and pro­tect the most vul­ner­a­ble peo­ples in all 52 coun­tries and ter­ri­to­ries of the Amer­i­c­as.