Western Bureau: Desmond Clarke, chief public health inspector for St James, has dedicated the last three decades of his life to the public health sector. In fact, he epitomises “commitment to the job”.

At 55, he is fast approaching the age of retirement, but he is not looking forward to the day when he will have to leave the job he loves, and to which he has committed much of his life. On the contrary, Clarke said he is determined to contribute as much he can to the public and the environment in his remaining years.

He has good reasons to want to continue in his chosen field because he has made significant contributions to his community over the years, and he is not shy to publicly state this fact.

“I am comforted by the fact that I have tried very hard to pass on what I have learned over the years to some of my fellow workers. And also, I know that I have made some significant difference in the lives of quite a few people out there who have looked to me for guidance in environmental and other matters…,” Clarke told the Observer in a recent interview.

“What I would like to see (now) is people coming to the point where they accept that they are equally responsible for their own health without looking over their shoulders to see if (the public health inspectors) are coming. I really would like to see us get to the point where people are proactive in terms of their own health.”

Clarke began his tenure in the health sector with the Quarantine Services Division at the Sangster International Airport in Montego Bay. After completing his initial studies at the West Indies School of Public Health in 1968, he was granted the Guinness Foundation Scholarship to continue his education at the Liverpool Polytechnic School in England. There he majored in building construction and he later attended the Tropical School of Medicine where he got his first certificate in tropical community health and medicine.

“After that, it was just a matter of moving up in my in-service training, like management courses and so on, at the West Indies School of Public Health,” he said.

Upon Clarke’s return to Jamaica in the early 1970s, he continued his tenure with the St James Health Department and served in various capacities in the four health districts in the parish. He said he was lured into his field after seeing how public health inspectors interfaced with the public and he was excited at the prospect of serving his community in a similar manner.

“I am really a people person, and that is what has always stood out to me from early. I always liked to see how the public health inspectors interfaced with the community. And I always admired them moving around with the community and I said to myself: ‘This is one way I can serve my country’,” Clarke told the Observer.

“I am not going to be boastful and say I didn’t want money, but it was really the whole reaching out to my fellow men that impressed me most of all and lured me to the public health department.”

It was only five years ago that the 55 year-old assumed his responsibilities as chief public health inspector for the parish. As chief, he said, he is the administrator for the inspectorate and has some 30 inspectors under his direct supervision. His responsibilities range from overseeing the operations of the parish’s vector control unit, port health, quarantine services, food safety to environmental sanitation.

And while Clarke readily admitted that being a public health inspector was not one of the more prestigious or lucrative professions, he said that it has proved most gratifying for him.

“If you are coming into public health sector to work, you have to love it. You have to love people. You must like to help people because that is what public health is all about.

Public health is a preventative science. In other words you are working and people don’t see what you are doing but if you don’t do it, then the nation gets ill,” he noted.

“You are not on the front line. You are always on the back end doing your work so if you are going to be coming into public health for somebody to recognise you and big you up, it is not going to happen because you are always on the back burner.”

And even though he does not look forward to it, he has realistically started to plan for his days of retirement which, he knows, must come. But he does not plan to remain idle even then.

“I think of retirement and what I do is try to make plans for it… I have been a lover of technical drawing since going to school and it’s something that I enjoy,” he said.

“That is an area I can go into so when retirement comes, I will still have something to do. I did building construction at Liverpool Polytechnic and I have been doing my best to keep abreast of what is going on.”

The father of two added that after he had vacated his position with the health department, it was incumbent on others to carry on the work.

“The fact of the matter is that if we do not maintain our environment in a safe and proper way then irrespective of how much money you get elsewhere you are not going to be in a position to enjoy it. And let us be very frank, somebody made the sacrifice earlier so that we can still enjoy the environment. So we must now have somebody in that position to ensure that the environment is sustained in a way that our future generations will really inherit. This is one of the things that we always try to stress. And to say that we consider health the number one priority in the land.”