JAMAICA on Monday issued a call that small island developing states (SIDS) be afforded special consideration to help them respond to public health challenges, especially during a pandemic.

Dr Christopher Tufton, Jamaica’s minister of health and wellness, made the call in his statement as outgoing president of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) Directing Council, at its 60th meeting in Washington, DC, United States.

Arguing that the meeting provided an unrivalled space to advance the work of public health in the interest of the people of the region of the Americas, Tufton said it came at a critical time, when there are significant challenges facing the region and, in particular, Caribbean small island developing states.

“These are challenges that demand scaled-up, collaborative and sustained actions, and across a range of areas involving diverse stakeholders — including those of us present in this room today,” he told the meeting held at PAHO headquarters.

“I believe that we are up to the task, with a demonstrated commitment to safeguarding the health of the region’s people and a track record of partnerships that have served the public good — incentivised by our individual and collective preoccupation with and prioritisation of the changing sick profile of our populations,” he added.

“The lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic are many; not the least of these is the need to plan better for pandemic influenza preparedness,” he said, adding that the World Health Organization’s Pandemic Influenza Preparedness Framework: Partnership Contribution High-Level Implementation Plan III, 2024-2030 is an important tool.

However, despite that plan, which outlines the strategy for strengthening pandemic influenza preparedness, Tufton argued that “special consideration must be given to SIDS and their particular circumstances: from high debt burdens to their small size and, therefore, compromised capacities to respond effectively, without support, in a pandemic”.

“This reality together with other prevailing stressors, including the sobering reality of climate change risks and threats, mean that Caribbean SIDS must have the benefit of special consideration and provisions that are enabling to their enhanced resilience,” Tufton said, adding that the situation is made even more urgent by the fact that a ballooning epidemic in noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) is facing not only Caribbean SIDS but the entire region of the Americas.

“As reflected in the recent 2023 Bridgetown Declaration on NCDs and Mental Health, COVID-19 has ‘highlighted the link between health and development, and exposed health system vulnerabilities for people living with NCDs and mental health conditions in SIDS’. Further, ‘the presence of NCDs and their risk factors increased the severity and mortality rates for COVID-19 patients’, with NCD screening, management and treatment, as well as mental health services, ‘severely disrupted during the pandemic’,” the health minister stated.

This, he argued, not only underscores the need for special consideration and enhanced provisioning for SIDS, “it also makes the case for attention to the behavioural sciences as an important part of our response to the varied challenges with which we are now faced — from the mammoth NCDs problem to the ongoing pandemic recovery and climate change, together with the prospect of future pandemics, which is always a clear and potential danger”.

He said that the use of traditional approaches and, in particular, the emphasis on clinical interventions, have not yielded the kind of results needed.

“The more than 70 per cent of people who die annually in Jamaica as a consequence of NCDs — as in other SIDS, the region of the Americas and globally — is evidence of this. I wish, therefore, to champion a concerted effort toward a human-centred health ecosystem approach which gives attention to the range of factors that influence people’s behaviour,” Tufton told the meeting.

He commended PAHO and the WHO for the development of a concept paper addressing the need for strategic public health communications for behaviour change, and urged an acceleration of work in this area, building on developments from earlier years including the Strategic Plan of the Pan American Health Organization 2020-2025 and the Strategy and Plan of Action on Knowledge Management and Communications.