Business View Caribbean | October 2020

29 BUSINESS VIEW CARIBBEAN OCTOBER 2020 NORTH EAST REGIONAL HEALTH AUTHOR I TY (NERHA) no longer able to connect them to travel or any particular individual. It makes contact tracing more difficult and so the strategy now is to do community outreach, heightened surveillance and education, reminding people about how the disease can be spread, maintaining six feet social distancing, wearing masks, sanitizing. Our team also distributes masks and sanitizers and educate persons on the need to be responsible in how they move around. “Currently, our Disaster Risk Management Act requires that any individual 70 years and over needs to be staying home, and that changes the dynamic because in our culture you’ll find multigenerational persons living in one household. The elderly are living among the young, so in our efforts to restrict the numbers of elderly who are affected, you need to be able to sensitize the younger persons that their activities outside the household can affect their elderly loved ones.” BVC: Is outreach more difficult in some projects designed to enhance technology and service offerings. The following is an edited transcript of that conversation. BVC: How is NERHA assisting communities during the coronavirus pandemic? Lamm: “We currently have about 2,800 staff members. Since the onset of COVID-19, we received permission to employ additional medical officers and a category of workers we call Community Health Aides. The objective is to get more reach at the community level by employing persons who live within particular communities to assist with the COVID outreach. So, people are interacting with someone they know and trust. “Community Health Aides assist with public health education and assist the public health nurses and inspectors with contact tracing. Jamaica is now in the classification of community spread for COVID-19, which means persons are contracting the disease but you’re Port Maria Hospital Management Team