By Svetlana Marshall
The Government of Guyana, through the Ministry of Health, today launched the US$22 million Guyana One Health Project. The project is being financed through the Pandemic Fund and the World Bank.
The Government received a US$15 million grant from The Pandemic Fund and an additional US$7 million from the IDA World Bank Group, through a line of credit, to launch the project.
The initiative is expected to help the country strengthen its capacity to prevent, prepare for and respond to health emergencies through a One Health approach.
In the event of an eligible crisis or emergency, the project is intended to help the country respond promptly and effectively.
Minister of Health, Dr Frank Anthony said extensive studies were conducted to ascertain the gaps within the system, notwithstanding the progress recorded in recent years. Those studies and evaluations, the Health Minister said, were taken into consideration, as well as the country’s experience during the COVID-19 pandemic, as the Guyana One Health Project was formulated.
“So, there are many, many lessons that we have learnt from this experience, and we pull of this experience that we have had, and we put them into this proposal, because we don’t want a repeat of what we had to go through. It was really a harsh experience for us, and while the general population might not have known about many of the challenges, I think the medical team, the people in government, the leadership understood how challenging those things could be. Because, even when you had money and you wanted to buy things, it wasn’t available on the international market, and even if it was available, the time for it to get here was quite challenging,” the Health Minister said.
Among the areas to be addressed is surveillance, particularly among the animal population as zoonotic diseases can easily be transmitted from animals to humans.
“We have seen examples of this, for example, bird flu, where from birds, it infected cattle, and cattle, the people who handle the cattle are infected or sometimes you have contaminated milk, you can get infected. So, there are examples like this that are real. And so, we have to be mindful because if we are not able to monitor these types of viruses, then we can have challenges,” the Health Minister said.
He said it is therefore important to build the country’s capacity.
The Guyana One Health Project is intended to reinforce Guyana’s capacity under the International Health Regulations (IHR) to advance key public health pillars, promote the One Health agenda, and mitigate the health, social and economic impacts of pandemics.
Its five components focus on laboratory and workforce capacity; health surveillance systems for early detection and response; one health coordination and capacity; project management, monitoring and evaluation; and contingency emergency response.
Senior Minister with responsibility for Finance, Dr Ashni Singh said the COVID-19 pandemic taught the country a valuable lesson about the need to build its resilience to respond to pandemics and other national emergencies, particularly in the area of health.
“In Guyana, I would like to think that we have demonstrated that we have certainly learnt that lesson. We are building everyday a more resilient economy, we are building of course in the health Sector, a sector that has dramatically, astronomically better prepared now that it was five years ago to deal with pandemics and the risk of pandemics, health emergencies, and the risk of health emergencies,” Minister Health said.
He said the Government has injected significant funds in the Health Sector to improve its resilience and effectiveness to the needs of the Guyanese people.
The World Bank Group’s Practice Manager Tanya Dmytraczenko said the World Bank is pleased to partner with Guyana to improve its healthcare system through the Guyana One Health Project.
Like Ministers Anthony and Singh, the World Bank Group Practice Manager said the project draws from the lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The pandemic has taught us that the health security cannot be left as a second plot, it can bring down the whole world economy, if we are not thinking ahead and really breaking through the fragmented approaches…that preceded the pandemic and left us so exposed,” she said.
She also said the project will help Guyana combat future pandemics by developing an integrated approach that can detect, respond and prevent before they become a crisis.
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