Breast­feed­ing is un­de­ni­ably a beau­ti­ful bond­ing ex­pe­ri­ence. How­ev­er, a nat­ur­al process is not how most new moth­ers de­scribe it. In fact, 92 per­cent of new moth­ers re­port hav­ing dif­fi­cul­ty nurs­ing, ac­cord­ing to re­search by Amer­i­can Acad­e­my of Pae­di­atrics and the Cincin­nati Chil­dren’s Hos­pi­tal Med­ical Cen­ter. Just like any oth­er skill, breast­feed­ing needs to be learned by both par­tic­i­pants, and this skill takes time and a com­pas­sion­ate non-judg­men­tal ap­proach.

We have al­ways heard the phrase from our el­ders that “Our health is in our hands” and it holds true, now more than ever. But does it come down to “How strong is our im­mu­ni­ty?” When we talk of im­mu­ni­ty, we gen­er­al­ly talk of cer­tain foods or drinks that can “boost” our im­mu­ni­ty, reg­u­lar ex­er­cis­es or eat­ing a healthy di­et that in­cludes foods high in an­tiox­i­dants, vi­t­a­mins and min­er­als. HEALTH PLUS de­cid­ed to take a deep dive in­to this dis­cus­sion, ex­plor­ing the truths and myths about OUR IM­MU­NI­TY.

As­so­ci­at­ed Press (AP): As an in­fec­tious dis­ease epi­demi­ol­o­gist, I feel moral­ly ob­lig­at­ed to pro­vide in­for­ma­tion on what we are see­ing from a trans­mis­sion dy­nam­ic per­spec­tive and how it ap­plies to the so­cial dis­tanc­ing mea­sures. Like any good sci­en­tist, I have no­ticed two things that are ei­ther not well ar­tic­u­lat­ed or not present in the “lit­er­a­ture” of on­line me­dia. (I have al­so re­lied on oth­er in­fec­tious dis­ease epi­demi­ol­o­gists for peer re­view of this piece.)

This COVID-19 pan­dem­ic has crum­bled the lives of mil­lions of per­sons as health sys­tems buck­le, bor­ders close, and aca­d­e­m­ic in­sti­tu­tions and busi­ness­es col­lapse. The con­ta­gion coro­n­avirus, as it spreads, so too has mis­in­for­ma­tion fu­elling dis­crim­i­na­tion and un­healthy dis­course. HEALTH PLUS is work­ing with health ex­perts to pro­mote facts over fear, bring­ing cred­i­ble guid­ance and knowl­edge to our pop­u­la­tion. Now more than ever we need all sani­tised hands on deck and team­work by every cit­i­zen of Trinidad and To­ba­go to flat­ten this curve and re­store the health of our pop­u­la­tion and ul­ti­mate­ly the health of our na­tion. We will get through this to­geth­er.

The T&T Fash­ion Com­pa­ny Ltd (Fash­ionTT) and DHL will be host­ing an on­line we­bi­nar ti­tled Re­al­iz­ing Your Glob­al E-Com­merce Po­ten­tial on Thurs­day, Au­gust 27, from 11 am to noon, via the Go­ToMeet­ing plat­form.

For the first time ever, the T&T Mu­sic Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (Mu­sicTT) will be present at The Mu­sic Im­bi­zo. The Mu­sic Im­bi­zo is a fast-grow­ing in­ter­na­tion­al mu­sic busi­ness con­fer­ence and ex­hi­bi­tion held an­nu­al­ly in Dur­ban, South Africa.

Lay­ing down on her bed one night, she be­gan to think about who she is as a per­son, and as a per­son in the steel­pan in­dus­try. This prompt­ed Nao-mi Fred­er­ick to start a so­cial me­dia page.

COVID-19 has tried it, but the young peo­ple of T&T are not con­tent­ed to sit by and let hate-mon­gers de­ter­mine this coun­try’s new nor­mal. Fol­low­ing a slew of racial­ly-charged com­ments and bit­ter ex­changes be­tween In­do-Trinida­di­ans and Afro-Trinida­di­ans on so­cial me­dia in the wake of the re­cent­ly-con­clud­ed Gen­er­al Elec­tions, T&T’s youth have pushed back in the hopes of launch­ing a re­gion­al move­ment against racism; ul­ti­mate­ly re­in­forc­ing re­cent in­ter­na­tion­al trends.

LSA Health­care Ser­vices (LSAH) brought smiles and school sup­plies to chil­dren in their com­mu­ni­ty of El So­cor­ro. The LSAH Ltd team, led by man­ag­ing di­rec­tor, Leela Ram­s­ingh, ini­ti­at­ed a Com­mu­ni­ty Out­reach in sup­port of the youth in the com­mu­ni­ty of Pan­choo Lane and en­vi­rons, Bound­ary Road, El So­cor­ro.

The O2N Style 2020—The Cre­ative Con­ver­sa­tion—re­cent­ly cre­at­ed quite an im­pact beam­ing its live vir­tu­al pan­el dis­cus­sion from the Re­gency Ball­room at the Hy­att Re­gency Trinidad, the Re­view of which res­onat­ed just as im­pres­sive­ly through its air­ing on Na­tion­al tele­vi­sion, last Sun­day.

With fur­ther re­stric­tions im­posed due to Covid-19, al­most all of the events planned by Pan Trin­ba­go Inc to com­mem­o­rate World Steel­band Month had to be can­celled.

CIBC First­Caribbean has launched its First­Caribbean Un­sung Front­line He­roes ini­tia­tive among its 16 ter­ri­to­ries, in­clud­ing T&T. The ini­tia­tive wel­comes nom­i­na­tions from the pub­lic to sug­gest an es­sen­tial work­er or peo­ple from their com­mu­ni­ties who put ser­vice above self dur­ing the COVID-19 cri­sis. Nom­i­na­tions end to­mor­row, on Au­gust 21, and win­ners will be an­nounced in Sep­tem­ber.