FAY­OLA K J FRAS­ER

“T oba­go first.” This ethos un­der­scores the work of Dr Faith B Yis­rael, the Deputy Chief Sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA), and the Sec­re­tary of Health, Well­ness & So­cial Pro­tec­tion in the THA. B Yis­rael has spent ap­prox­i­mate­ly the last six years in the po­lit­i­cal sphere, faith­ful­ly ded­i­cat­ed to the ser­vice of the peo­ple of To­ba­go. An “in­tro­vert­ed” politi­cian, her per­son­al­i­ty is oxy­moron­ic, as her work re­quires her to be a pub­lic fig­ure, con­sis­tent­ly in­ter­act with peo­ple and ex­press her­self on a pub­lic plat­form, while pri­vate­ly she con­sid­ers her­self con­sid­er­ably re­served.

B Yis­rael hails from Belle Gar­den, To­ba­go, the same area she cur­rent­ly rep­re­sents as an As­sem­bly­man, which is where she went to both preschool and pri­ma­ry school. Af­ter at­tend­ing Sig­nal Hill Com­pre­hen­sive, she re­ceived schol­ar­ship fund­ing and went to the Uni­ver­si­ty of Pitts­burgh in Penn­syl­va­nia to pur­sue her BSc in Neu­ro­science. Neu­ro­science, a very di­ver­gent path from her even­tu­al ca­reer, was her study of choice as she “al­ways want­ed to be a physi­cian”. Neu­ro­surgery specif­i­cal­ly ap­pealed to her, as she re­mem­bers dur­ing her child­hood, the sole neu­ro­sur­geon in To­ba­go was go­ing on va­ca­tion and an is­land-wide alert was raised, en­cour­ag­ing peo­ple to have an abun­dance of cau­tion as no neu­ro­sur­geon would be avail­able on is­land. Think­ing this de­pen­dence on one sur­geon was crazy, B Yis­rael de­cid­ed on her course of study to add to the num­bers of prac­tic­ing neu­ro­sur­geons in To­ba­go.

Up­on com­plet­ing her de­gree, B Yis­rael “quick­ly re­alised neu­ro­surgery and med­i­cine weren’t for me”, and de­cid­ed to in­stead hone in on Pub­lic Health. “I came to the un­der­stand­ing that al­though I was in­ter­est­ed in health, I want­ed to keep peo­ple healthy, not on­ly deal with peo­ple who were al­ready sick.” This led her to her Mas­ters and Doc­tor­ate in Pub­lic Health as her goal was to con­ceive of and im­ple­ment poli­cies that would en­cour­age pre­ven­tion over cure. Not­ing that in T&T and the wider Caribbean, the preva­lence of non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases caused by lifestyle fac­tors is ex­treme­ly high, B Yis­rael saw an op­por­tu­ni­ty to make a re­al im­pact in adapt­ing the pub­lic health care sys­tem to­ward a bet­ter mod­el.

Af­ter she re­turned to To­ba­go in 2007, she plunged in­to the pub­lic health­care sys­tem, as a Pub­lic Health Spe­cial­ist in the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly, Di­vi­sion of Health and So­cial Ser­vices. The qui­et rum­bles of pol­i­tick­ing be­gan not too long af­ter as she knew that al­though she was pro­vid­ing sound tech­ni­cal ad­vice, the politi­cians were the ones ul­ti­mate­ly mak­ing fi­nal de­ci­sions. “I al­ways liked pol­i­tics,” B Yis­rael re­calls, “but there was no po­lit­i­cal or­gan­i­sa­tion that rep­re­sent­ed my phi­los­o­phy, un­til Mr (Wat­son) Duke came up with the Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots (PDP) Par­ty, and my phi­los­o­phy aligned with them at the time”. She was en­cour­aged by Mr Duke to con­test a seat in 2017, and af­ter what she de­scribed as a “crazy and ex­cit­ing time”, she lost the seat by five votes. B Yis­rael laughs as she re­mem­bers that peo­ple ap­proached her af­ter the elec­tion say­ing they were plan­ning to vote, but didn’t get the chance. This nar­row loss high­light­ed to her that all votes re­al­ly do count.

The phi­los­o­phy of the PDP that drew her in still rings true to B Yis­rael to­day. “In this twin is­land state, we need to con­tin­ue to fight for To­ba­go to be side by side with Trinidad,” she says, “the phi­los­o­phy of the PDP was To­ba­go first and fore­most, to get equal­i­ty and then press for­ward”. A proud To­bag­on­ian, through and through, she is de­vot­ed to pur­su­ing the de­vel­op­ment agen­da of the is­land. At present, she is re­spon­si­ble for the health­care sys­tem, the To­ba­go Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty. She sees it as not on­ly a great chal­lenge but a great re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, to de­vel­op and ex­e­cute a sys­tem that works seam­less­ly for the pop­u­la­tion to the best of its abil­i­ty.

Re­mem­ber­ing one of the high­lights of her ca­reer thus far makes B Yis­rael chuck­le. Dur­ing late 2022 to ear­ly 2023, the health­care sys­tem rolled out a cataract re­duc­tion pro­gramme, so that peo­ple who spent years on the wait­ing list for cataracts fi­nal­ly got the surgery done. When she walked in­to the fa­cil­i­ty where they did the pro­gramme, one of the gen­tle­men start­ed singing out “I can see clear­ly now!” Aside from the hi­lar­i­ty of it, B Yis­rael found it touch­ing and heart-warm­ing, the gen­uine grat­i­tude and ex­cite­ment of that mo­ment. Many peo­ple ap­proach her with thanks for her work, but she does not ac­cept it as a com­pli­ment, be­cause she con­sid­ers it her job to serve, “a job I do with­out fear or favour”.

Her fear­less spir­it shines through in her ad­vice to women. De­scrib­ing the way women, and es­pe­cial­ly fe­male politi­cians or women in the pub­lic eye are ex­pect­ed to “be mar­ried, or have a cook­ie cut­ter im­age”, she re­jects those ex­pec­ta­tions. En­cour­ag­ing oth­er women to do the same, she calls for women to be their au­then­tic selves, es­pe­cial­ly in the po­lit­i­cal space, “when we are gen­uine­ly our­selves we bet­ter rep­re­sent the peo­ple who elect­ed us”.

Dr Faith B Yis­rael is a pow­er­ful woman, a leader and a trail­blaz­er, com­mit­ted to grap­pling with the chal­lenges in the pub­lic ser­vice to bring To­ba­go for­ward. She is de­ter­mined to sur­mount the tra­di­tion­al men­tal­i­ty that sug­gests cer­tain things can­not be done or im­proved and leave a lega­cy of ex­cel­lence. As one of the Women to Watch, B Yis­rael will con­tin­ue to lead in the po­lit­i­cal sphere with all eyes keen­ly fo­cused on her bril­liant work.