Seventy-five local public health and clinical practitioners were on Monday awarded certificates by the Pan Caribbean Partnership (PANCAP) against HIV and AIDS for successfully completing the University of Washington Global Health E-learning Programme on Monday, a Department of Public Information (DPI) release stated yesterday.
The comprehensive programme, it was explained, covered a series of crucial areas, including policy development, leadership and management, economic evaluation, monitoring and evaluation, and policy management and advocacy in global health.
The Global Health E-learning Programme, facilitated by PANCAP, has been instrumental in training over 499 individuals from 2021 to 2023.
At the ceremony, Minister of Health, Dr Frank Anthony, congratulated the graduates while emphasising the vital role continuous learning plays in enhancing patient care and outcomes. “Let me extend congratulations to all of you for taking this course. I think for us in the health sector it is quite important for us to be constantly learning… If we don’t keep ourselves updated constantly then we can have problems. He added, “I want to encourage persons to keep doing it because it is going to help you to widen your horizon and to be able to better perform at whatever job you are doing in the ministry.”
Continuing on that note, the minister spoke of the government’s commitment to advancing clinical practices by entrenching laws to ensure ongoing professional development for doctors and nurses.
Chargé d’Affaires of the United States Embassy, Adrienne Galanek, commended the initiative, highlighting USAID’s substantial investment of US$189 million in Guyana since 2004 to support HIV prevention, testing, care, and treatment services. She also noted PANCAP’s role in providing technical guidance and promoting best practices to achieve epidemic control across the Caribbean region.
Director of PANCAP Coordinating Unit, Dr Wendy Emanuelson, and CARICOM’s Director of Human and Social Development, Helen Royer also presented at the simple ceremony.
PANCAP, serving as the regional mechanism coordinating the response to HIV in the Caribbean, operates under the guidance of the Caribbean Regional Strategic Framework on HIV/AIDS 2019–2025, the release added.
