The Environmental Health Department is constrained by a shortage of officers, but senior officials assure efforts are afoot to remedy the problem.
Chief Environmental Health Officer Francina Bascombe told the Estimates debate on Wednesday, as officials from the Ministry of Health occupied the Well of Parliament, that while the department once had a full complement of staff who were often visible in communities, there has been a major shift.
“We have been focusing on some of the other areas like Port Health…. Where we had about seven or so persons who made up that team, we now have 20 persons assigned to Port Health. We also have persons assigned to processing plants, so that takes up a number of our officers,” she said.
“So, we don’t have as [many] officers to cover the areas as we did in the past and in addition to that…we don’t have a full complement of officers. We are probably short of about 20 environmental health officers based on our established posts.”
The situation is compounded by an inadequate number of
environmental health assistants to go into districts, Bascombe added.
“So that sometimes accounts for why persons said they are not seeing the environmental health officers, but they are there in the community but probably not as frequently as persons used to see them,” she said.
However, the chief environmental health officer assured that the department still tries to cover districts across the island and explained that specific areas are prioritised.
The issue is a concern for Chief Medical Officer Dr Kenneth George who stressed that the upcoming ICC Men’s T20 Cricket World Cup is a major undertaking for the health authorities and the work of environmental health officers to keep the country safe cannot be understated.
“We are currently doing training in outbreak investigation and the major issue for me from a public health perspective is food safety,” he said.
Dr George also stressed that environmental health officers play a critical role in vector control, citing their efforts to bring the recent dengue fever outbreak under control.
He also noted that work is needed to control the rodent population but that could not happen without the assistance of the public.
“As with any public health intervention, you can’t only rely on the public health inspectors. You need to have the public on your side to make sure that you can have change in the society.
“So persons are now encouraged to be a bit more vocal in letting us know what is happening out there,” the CMO said.
(SD)
