After serving as Barbados’ Chief Medical Officer (CMO) of Health for 12 years, Dr Joy St John will assume the new post of assistant director general for climate change and other determinants of health at the World Health Organisation’s Geneva headquarters on October 16.
Friday was her last day on the job and the affable CMO was bombarded with calls from well-wishers and visits from staff who dropped in at her office in the Frank Walcott Building on Culloden Road continuously to say their goodbyes. Among those saying farewell was Maria Rawlins, an administrative officer who could hardly contain the emotion, and Wendy Burrowes, an auxiliary dental officer, both of them from units of the Ministry of Health.
They represented the “unusually supreme group of professionals” who St John said made Barbados’ health system work and attract international attention and emulation of what is being done here in the area of public health services. (GC)
