– workshop told
The best way to approach the fight against illicit substances is to increase partnerships and greater collaboration in all sectors of the health services, according to a consensus reached by regional policy makers.
In the meantime, the Caricom Secretariat has been moving ahead in critical elements of its programme of work in the areas of drug demand reduction, primarily because of partnerships that it had forged.
The call for greater collaboration came during a three-day workshop on “Behaviour Change Communication for Drug Abuse Prevention Planning”, which was organized jointly by Caricom and the National Council for Drug Abuse (NCDA) Jamaica with funding from the European Union under the 9th EDF Programme.
A news release from the Caricom Secretariat at Turkeyen said that the workshop has recognized that substance abuse is a significant public health and human security issue.
The global crisis had forced regional governments to be more creative in utilizing their limited resources, therefore greater partnerships and collaboration were necessary to make any sustainable gains in the drug fight.
The release quoted Beverley Reynolds, Programme Manager, Sustainable Development, speaking on behalf of the Caricom Secretariat, as saying that “in this fight, everyone must be on board – the government, the private sector, the NGOs, the religious community, our places of higher learning, the international partners, the parents and you the
practitioners…”
Reynolds stated that in the secretariat’s work in the areas of drug demand reduction, 300 persons had participated in training workshops covering a range of drug-related issues and topics.
And the secretariat through the Technical Advisory Body had provided in-country technical support for the re-establishment of drug councils and had also produced several tools and manuals to assist demand reduction practitioners in the execution of their work.
Meanwhile, Chairman of the Jamaica National Council on Drug Abuse (NCDA) Dr Earl Wright explained that in order to influence children, drug abuse prevention should start with the education of the parents. “They need to know the influences that they need to provide for their children and this starts with influencing the brain at its earliest stages of development during pregnancy.”
Executive Director for the NCDA, Jamaica Michael Tucker stated that the solution to mitigating substance abuse should not be confined to a war against traffickers and producers, but there was also the urgent need to tackle supply and demand simultaneously.
“We all have to work together and be committed to reducing the incidence of drug abuse,” Tucker added. “In order to achieve this goal, the problem has to be tackled from the security, judicial economic and social spheres.”
This, he said, should involve the use of the Integrated Demand Reduction Approach which required the full cooperation of relevant government ministries, agencies and health sectors, as well as working in collaboration with the Private Sector, non-Governmental organisations (NGOs) volunteers and targeted communities.
Day two of the workshop opened with international Behaviour Change Communication Specialist Dr Shaheed Mohammed, from the University of Pennsylvania whose keynote presentation focused on the use of Behaviour Change Communication (BCC) theories and models in shaping communication, the release concluded.
