by Linda Straker
- Covid-19 After Action Review stakeholders’ conference opened on Monday, 25 March
- Health Minister Phillip Telesford said Covid-19 changed lives significantly
- Key next steps for Grenada includes developing infectious disease emergency plan
Health Minister Phillip Telesford said that a one-week Covid-19 After Action Review stakeholders’ conference which opened in St George’s on Monday, 25 March 2024, will provide an opportunity to collect information that can result in an improvement in public health response in the eventuality of another pandemic.
“This exercise holds significant importance as it provides Grenada with an opportunity to examine and collect data necessary for enhancing it public health response system at a strategic level,” Phillip said while speaking at the opening ceremony at the Radisson Grenada conference centre.
He said, “The Covid-19 pandemic brought the entire world to a standstill and undoubtedly a significance number of individuals in this room this morning can vividly recall the period of the pandemic that had a profound impact on every aspect of life and our economies globally.”
“The introduction of the virus to Grenada had an immediate effect on the country customary way of life, the implementation of public health measures necessitated the prohibitions of fundamental activities like going to church the way we know it and the distances that we had to keep; the long lines at the banks, online learning, online meetings,” he said, pointing out that this changed lives significantly.
“We are still recovering. This after-action review aims to strengthen our public health response pillars, facilitate consensus building, document lessons learnt, identify short-, medium- and long-term processes for improving future events including pandemic preparedness by embracing best practices, preventing errors, and strengthening health systems,” he said.
Grenada’s Covid-19 data put it in the classification of endemic and Dr Shawn Charles, Chief Medical Officer said that the key next steps for Grenada includes the development of an infectious disease emergency plan that incorporates responses to various agents.
“Not just respiratory illness because we recognise this is an important thing to have also the development of a health emergency centre and various standard operating procedures (SOPs) that will be added to our multi hazard plan, the conduct of stimulation exercises which will be important to test the responses that we put in our plan,” he said.
“This means that we have a lot of work to do in the coming months. I know work has already started on some of these activities and all of this is to ensure that we are ready to face any future health security events,” he told the conference attendees including healthcare practitioners and allied healthcare providers.
This review is linked directly to the 2020 World Bank-activated Contingent Emergency Response Component (CERC) for Dominica, Grenada and St Vincent and the Grenadines. CERCs are a World Bank financing instrument that allow for the rapid reallocation of funds from ongoing operations, to cover immediate needs in case of a disaster or public health emergency.
The CERC was activated for Dominica, Grenada, and St Vincent and the Grenadines under the OECS Regional Health Project, for a total of US$ 10 million (i.e., US$2.5 million for Grenada, US$3 million for Dominica, and US$4.5 million for Saint Vincent and the Grenadines).
