From left: Winner of the Healthy Living Poster/Notebook Competition, Tahirah Mann of The Rock Christian School, poses with Zyanna Waithe-Marshall and Ashleigh Turney of Hilda Skeene Primary, who placed second and third respectively in the competition.
Chief Community Development Officer, Patricia Hackett-Codrington, speaking yesterday morning.
THE Community Development Department (CDD) is prepared to do its part to help reduce the incidence of chronic non-communicable diseases (CNCDs).
That’s according to Chief Community Development Officer of the CDD, Patricia Hackett-Codrington. She made the comments at the prize-giving ceremony for the ‘Healthy Living Poster/Notebook Competition’ held at the Warrens Office Complex yesterday morning. In winners’ row were Zyanna Waithe-Marshall and Ashleigh Turney of Hilda Skeene Primary who won the second and third places respectively, and Tahirah Mann of The Rock Christian School who placed first.
“We recognise as a department the importance of all interventions at all levels… We are hopeful as a department that we can play a supportive role to the Ministries of Health and Education and that together we can achieve the goals set in the area of the reduction of NCDs,” she said.
Hackett-Codrington made the point as she noted that their efforts are in keeping with the recognition by the Heads of Government of CARICOM in 2007, that work with CNCDs is a priority since treating such conditions is a significant part of the health budget of the region.
“Coming out of that meeting was the Port-of-Spain Declaration, which put in place a plan to stop the epidemic of non-communicable diseases. Heads are going to be meeting again this week, starting tomorrow (today). This week will be the 10th anniversary of that declaration and they will be evaluating how successful the implementation of the declaration has been. They will look at the gaps and the challenges which are preventing the region from reaching the desired goals. NCDs are also the subject of the international agenda and their reduction is specifically mentioned in Goal 3 of the 2020 Agenda for Sustainable Development,” she said.
However, she maintained that realising these objectives cannot happen unless all hands are on deck. As such, she said that requires all government agencies that are directly in contact with people, as well as community-based organisations and non-governmental organisations to be involved in the process. With that in mind, she indicated that the CDD is cognisant of its role of mobilising the communities and therefore aims at not only being driven by the express needs of the community members, but also engaging in activities which fit into the national development strategy.
“We have therefore set as part of our specific work plan for the next year the development of social education committees which would intervene at the community level with various topics of importance, similarly to how we have used our HIV Committees which have functioned for the last decade,” she added.
With that in mind, she made mention of other efforts by the CDD to encourage healthy living among Barbadians, including the recently launched Community Health Action Management Programme (CHAMPS). She said through that programme, which was launched in St. George, they intend to work with various community groups in the area of health and there are plans to expand it to other communities. (JRT)