MINISTER OF HEALTH John Boyce wants the future of health care in Barbados to be completed through a full-country approach.
Boyce made the comment yesterday during an interview while attending the 69th World Health Assembly, in Geneva, Switzerland.
“Though we continue to measure our basic health care barometers, we still have to engage in reaching out to other parts of society. The question of violence, of families, of education, exercise and trade are all important,” he said at the World Health Organisation-organised event in the capital city.
The minister said Barbados also has to pay special attention to the types of food it imports going forward.
“We are going to move to a nutrition-based battle against NCDs (non-communicable diseases). We need to incorporate all of these agencies, especially trade, into our future agenda,” he said.
Boyce said dialogue at this week’s assembly concentrated a lot on reform at the World Health Organisation, but that as minister of health in Barbados, the handling of NCDs remains paramount, and he is hoping to bring back to Barbados knowledge to continue attacking that issue.
“It must be our continued approach towards the NCDs battle. NCDs account for a significant part of of our health care budget, so we need to work around all aspects of it. The funding may not be as available as it was years before, and a number of our (Caribbean) countries are being asked to look within our funding programmes and create that space so there is money available to continue to improve our health care services to the people.”
Boyce added that Barbados is also in the midst of reviewing its system so as to modernise health care financing and what levels of efficiencies can be brought to the fore.
“Health care access, coverage and financing are important. We don’t want people when they access health care, to find themselves penniless. A lot of the elderly in our world today are facing that challenge and this is one of the very important factors we are looking at.”
The minister also said no country should ever close its eyes to communicable diseases. “They can come back and emerge in different forms. We are now in the throes of the battle with the Zika virus. We know about Dengue (Fever) and Chikungunya and Yellow Fever. We are aware that the ground we have covered, we need to keep covered.”
Boyce concluded that Barbados would therefore always have to have funding and special programmes in place to protect its people. (BA)
