Sascha Wil­son

Even as the gov­ern­ment pre­pares to re­ceive the COVID-19 vac­cines, Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh is an­tic­i­pat­ing “an­ti-vac­cine kick­backs” even from with­in the med­ical fra­ter­ni­ty.

Deyals­ingh was speak­ing at the vir­tu­al open­ing of the first Na­tion­al Health and Re­search Con­fer­ence on Thurs­day, one day af­ter he an­nounced that prepa­ra­tions are be­ing done to re­ceive the first batch of vac­cines.

Dur­ing the min­istry’s vir­tu­al me­dia con­fer­ence on Wednes­day, the min­is­ter said that the Mod­er­na vac­cine will be more fea­si­ble for T&T than the Pfiz­er vac­cine.

The min­istry has al­ready se­lect­ed three sites to store the vac­cine, two in Trinidad and one in To­ba­go.

Deyals­ingh was speak­ing about the ethics in health re­search and gain­ing the pub­lic’s trust when he ad­dressed the is­sue of op­po­si­tion to the vac­cine.

“We are go­ing to have a chal­lenge and some re­search has to be done on this and this has to be the an­ti-vac­cine kick­back that we are go­ing to get when a COVID vac­cine is launched. That is go­ing to be an area that we will have to find out what leads the pop­u­la­tion and even some in the med­ical fra­ter­ni­ty and we can­not ex­clude the med­ical fra­ter­ni­ty from this be­cause there are some doc­tors lo­cal­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly who buy in­to the con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries about vac­cines.”

He not­ed that the CO­V­AX fa­cil­i­ty of which the Mod­er­na vac­cine is a part is a clear ex­am­ple of how a world pre­mier fa­cil­i­ty can com­mu­ni­cate, can co­or­di­nate us­ing re­search to bring about pub­lic trust in that re­search.

Not­ing that the top­ics in the con­fer­ence are in line with the min­istry’s strate­gic pri­or­i­ties, he point­ed out that Non-Com­mu­ni­ca­ble Dis­eases (NCD) are one of the lead­ing caus­es of mor­bid­i­ty and mor­tal­i­ty in the coun­try.

Ac­cord­ing to da­ta sub­mit­ted by the re­gion­al health au­thor­i­ties for the pe­ri­od Jan­u­ary to Sep­tem­ber, he said there have been 2,128 NCD-re­lat­ed. He gave the fol­low­ing break­down: heart dis­ease 48 per cent, di­a­betes 22 per cent, can­cer 13 per cent, and cere­brovas­cu­lar dis­ease 17 per cent. He said the goal of his min­istry’s NCD plan is to re­duce the bur­den of pre­ventable mor­tal­i­ty be­fore age 70 due to NCDs by 25 per cent by 2025. “With the ad­vent of NCDs, the gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go is in­creas­ing­ly chal­lenged to main­tain the health of their peo­ple in an eq­ui­table and cost-ef­fec­tive way. There con­tin­ues to, there­fore, be the need for re­search on the ef­fec­tive­ness, out­comes, ac­cess, and cost of the vary­ing op­tions avail­able of the health of the pop­u­la­tion.” The min­is­ter, how­ev­er, un­der­scored the im­por­tance of ethics in the con­duct of health re­search. “As Trinidad and To­ba­go in­creas­es ca­pac­i­ty to con­duct es­sen­tial health re­search it is im­per­a­tive to en­sure that re­search is con­duct­ed eth­i­cal­ly so that the well-be­ing of those who par­tic­i­pate in re­search is ad­e­quate­ly pro­tect­ed and that in­sti­tu­tions in­volved in the con­duct of re­search as­sume their re­spon­si­bil­i­ty in en­sur­ing that that re­search is eth­i­cal.” Al­so prais­ing the con­fer­ence or­gan­is­ers for al­lot­ting time in their dis­cus­sions for men­tal health and the use of mar­i­jua­na in the man­age­ment of can­cer, he not­ed that the T&T gov­ern­ment is at the cusp of le­gal­iz­ing mar­i­jua­na for med­i­c­i­nal pur­pos­es. The con­fer­ence will cul­mi­nate to­day.