As part of its ongoing preparation for public health emergencies, last Tuesday, the Ministry of Health (MoH), in collaboration with the visiting delegation from the United States Center for Disease Control and Prevention, hosted a two-day Public Health Emergency Management (PHEM) workshop at the ministry’s boardroom on Brickdam, Georgetown, a MoH release announced yesterday.
It explained that PHEM is a comprehensive discipline focused on anticipating, mitigating, planning for, responding to, and recovering from all types of public health emergencies (PHE).
The purpose of the workshop, the MoH stated, is to bring together technical stakeholders to discuss PHEM, evaluate Guyana’s current PHEM programme, and lay the foundation for a PHEM Plan of Action or Work Plan. This plan will outline a roadmap for training and technical assistance to develop, improve, or sustain Guyana’s PHEM programme.
Minister of Health, Dr Frank Anthony, who was present at the opening, in his remarks, emphasised the importance of being prepared for public health emergencies by training more individuals in this field.
“I believe we must have trained personnel who can respond to public health emergencies, and I think this activity will take us one step closer to the direction we want to go.”
Also present at this morning’s workshop were Chief Medical Officer (Ag), Dr Jeetendra Mohanlall; Deputy Director for Strategy and Science, CDC South American Regional Office, Dr Roberto Freire Esteves; CDC Division of Emergency Operations (DEO), Emergency Management Training and Capacity Develop-ment Branch, Dr Dianna Carroll; CDC DEO, Global Emergency Management Capacity Development Team (GEMCDT), Emergency Management Technical Advisor (EMTA), Chief Michael (Mike) Phipps; CDC DEO, GEMCDT, EMTA, Jesus Rodriguez; as well as representa-tives from various agencies.
