Ministry of Health Advances Efforts to Strengthen Public Healthcare Services Across Saint Lucia.

[music] >> Universal health coverage is a government's main policy thrust for implementation. This means access to quality clinical care to the population and a reduction in out-of-pocket payments, that is without putting them through financial hardships. To facilitate the implementation of universal health coverage, it's important for us to strengthen our public health um health services and also expand services as well in some areas. We've done a review of the existing services and the public health primary care team, we have been working to strengthen primary care in a phased approach. To facilitate this, we've looked at a number of measures. One of them is the review of all of our clinical protocols that our senior medical officers are working on now to ensure standardized high-quality care at all of the facilities, no matter where patients um access care. The other issue we've looked at is a lot of our standard operating procedures within the health facilities. We've looked at our human resources, looking at patient numbers, looking at the mobility and mortality profile, that is what are people accessing care for at the various facilities. This has meant and one of the things we've also done is to we listen to patients' complaints as well, and we look for ways to improve wherever those reports come to us at the Ministry of Health. So, over the last 6 months, I've had the opportunity to meet with all of the relevant stakeholders, health facilities as well, quite a few of them. This includes the Millennium Heights Medical Complex that we are working on to implement our national blood bank um services, and this committee cons- it it is made up of all of the health services, both public and private. I've also had the opportunity I work closely with the St. Jude Hospital Commissioning Team. Um we were very pleased for the uh opening of the new dialysis center successfully down in the south, and also working towards the successful commissioning of the other services to the new site. I've also met with the St. Lucia Fire Service looking at ways to improve pre-hospital care, also the team at SLASPA to look at how we strengthen port health services. Within our primary care, I've also taken the opportunity to visit our primary care facilities. We are working on the expansion of the Gros Islet polyclinic, which we want to make 24 hours very soon. We've moved into the newly constructed area while construction is still going on to the to update and upgrade the middle section of the facility at this time. I've also had the opportunity to visit and meet the team at the Soufriere Hospital as well. Over the last few months as well, I've had the opportunity to visit quite a few of our facilities such as the Canaries Wellness Centre, which was newly opened, the Vanand Wellness Centre as well, Belle Vue Health Facility, View Fort Wellness Centre, Beti Wells as well, just to name a few of those that I have visited. It has given an opportunity to meet with the staff, to hear their concerns, and to look at ways that we can improve care. I also got the opportunity to meet with quite a few of the patients who access care those facilities to get a feel of their experiences accessing care through our services. >> [music] >> At the level of the ministry, we are committed to improving the quality of care that we provide to our patients and we're doing so on many levels. We have increased the staffing numbers especially when it comes to our district medical officers, our senior medical officers. The senior medical officers provide oversight especially for our urgent care. Um at present, we have four senior medical officers, one for general clinical services, the other for infectious disease. Also, as we strengthen our urgent and emergency um care services and also to improve and to ensure we have policies in place for NCDs. We've increased the number of district medical officers because we've increased some of the services that we provide and post-COVID, we also noted that there a greater percentage of the population was accessing care within the public sector. So, to ensure we could reduce the waiting times and we also increase the number of clinics that we were providing to the public. So, we also increased the numbers. We've also looked at the medication that we use. We are working with the pharmacy services. We know we have some shortages there. But, we have been working closely with the chief pharmacist to see how we improve on the allocation of pharmacists within the primary care services. Like I indicated, our protocols for clinical care, also training for our health care providers has also been ongoing as well. So, we are looking at all of the different ways. We have also been increasing the services under universal health care to the public. Given the assessments that we've carried out on the public sector services over the past 6 months, we will be continuing those health facilities reviews with the senior clinical officers within the Ministry of Health. So, there will be more officers, both myself, the medical officer of health, and the senior medical officers visiting our clinical services on a continuous basis to ensure that the quality of care is what it should be to the public. So, this will be ongoing. We shall be continuing um those visits to review the care that is provided within our community facilities. >> [music]