Bavi­ta Gopaulchan

One day af­ter call­ing on Trinidad and To­ba­go to ramp up its COVID-19 test­ing, the Pan-Amer­i­can Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion yes­ter­day made an­oth­er ap­peal to coun­tries around the re­gion to ex­pand their health work­forces in the event there is an­oth­er health emer­gency.

At a vir­tu­al me­dia brief­ing yes­ter­day, PA­HO Di­rec­tor Dr Caris­sa Eti­enne said the or­gan­i­sa­tion is deeply con­cerned about the hu­man cost of the pan­dem­ic, as she not­ed there are now al­most 4,000 deaths a day be­ing record­ed in the re­gion.

Health work­ers, Eti­enne point­ed out re­main most vul­ner­a­ble. She point­ed out that PA­HO’s da­ta shows near­ly 570,000 health­care work­ers across the re­gion have fall­en ill and more than 2,500 have suc­cumbed to the virus.

The PA­HO di­rec­tor there­fore called on gov­ern­ments to en­sure even those who are not di­rect­ly car­ing for COVID pa­tients are prop­er­ly pro­tect­ed and com­pen­sat­ed.

“Health work­ers should be work­ing reg­u­lar shifts, not over­time long hours since we know that risk of in­fec­tion in­creas­es the longer we work,” Eti­enne said.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, she sug­gest­ed these work­ers be at the front of the line to­geth­er with those most at risk of se­vere COVID-19 to re­ceive vac­cines when they be­comes avail­able.

In the in­ter­im, Eti­enne said it is im­por­tant for coun­tries to boost their health­care ca­pac­i­ty in the event an­oth­er health dis­as­ter hits.

“Across Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean, there are just 20 physi­cians per 10,000 peo­ple—much low­er than the WHO’s rec­om­mend­ed 30 per 10,000. So coun­tries must hire more doc­tors, as well as nurs­es, mid­wives and first re­spon­ders,” Eti­enne in­di­cat­ed.

Last month, Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh an­nounced that the Gov­ern­ment was hir­ing peo­ple across the med­ical spec­trum, as he ad­mit­ted nurs­es and doc­tors in T&T were be­ing burned out while car­ing for COVID-19 pa­tients. Some health work­ers have al­so test­ed pos­i­tive for the virus as they care for those who are ill.

Mean­while, Eti­enne al­so con­firmed that with­in re­cent weeks, PA­HO has been in con­sul­ta­tion with gov­ern­ments across the re­gion about re­open­ing their bor­ders.

How­ev­er, she ad­vised gov­ern­ments to care­ful­ly eval­u­ate be­fore re­sum­ing trav­el by ask­ing, “What are the trans­mis­sion dy­nam­ics of the virus in the coun­try, as well as the test­ing and con­tact trac­ing ca­pac­i­ty, and is the health sys­tem pre­pared for an in­flux of cas­es in the event of a new out­break oc­curs?”

On Tues­day, PA­HO’s Di­rec­tor for Com­mu­ni­ca­ble Dis­eases, Dr Mar­cos Es­pinal, said T&T was still not test­ing enough to ful­ly un­der­stand the mag­ni­tude of the prob­lem in the coun­try.