Back in August, Belize's Dr. Carla Barnett assumed the office of Secretary-General of the Caribbean Community, succeeding her predecessor, Ambassador Erwin LaRoque from Dominica.
She's been the focal point of the CARICOM's operations in the region for the last 4 months, and today, she hosted her first press conference as Sec. Gen. The discussion was held on Zoom where she outlined CARICOM's wide range of activities over the last 12 months.
Of course, since the COVID pandemic is still causing the world great hardship at this time, it was a major focus for CARICOM. Here's what Dr. Barnett had to say about the push to ensure that the 15 member-states had fair and equitable access to vaccines for their populations:
Dr. Carla Barnett - Secretary-General, CARICOM
"With respect to COVID 19, the primary focus, so far, has been on acquiring sufficient vaccines to save lives and provide protection to allow for the revival of economic activity. With the assistance primarily of the governments of India, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada, as well as our provisions under the COVAX facility, and the highly-appreciated accommodation of the African Union, through the African Medical Supplies Platform, a significant supply of vaccines have been made available across member-states. Our Heads of Government, the Caribbean Public Health Agency, CARPHA, and the CARICOM Secretariat continue to work tirelessly to maintain an adequate flow of supply. However, we have not been as successful in persuading sufficient of our citizens to be vaccinated so as to reduce the rate of death and the severity of infections, as well as the stress on our health systems and our frontline personnel. We may not have a unified practice, but there is a single policy, and that single policy in every member state is to protect the citizens, to access as many vaccines as every country can get, to encourage citizens to get vaccinated. That policy remains the same in all our countries. In 2022, we expect that pandemic-related issues will continue to dominate with implications for our economies and for the social sector."
It's widely accepted that the pandemic brought a lot of suffering, especially to developing nations like the CARICOM member-states, but the Secretary-General pointed out today that adaptation to the pandemic brought advancements like the widespread roll-out of E-governance. You'll remember that the Briceno Government launched their National Digital Agenda last Monday. Well, according to the Secretary-General, roll-outs like this one are happening throughout the region:
Dr. Carla Barnett - Secretary-General, CARICOM
"The pandemic has forced us to work together on that very important issue of access to vaccines. And it's also raised the level of priority that we now have to give to a number of things, which we have been talking about for some time, and know we are all trying to get these things done individually, and at the CARICOM level. We're talking about things like incorporating IT more into the way we work. So, we have a lot of e-governance programs accelerating at the level of member-states and within the secretariat as well, we are having to work through how we work differently, because of having to integrate ICTs more into the way we communicate, work, and get our business done. It also has put greater emphasis on agriculture because one of the things that happened early in the pandemic is that the shipping lanes were disrupted. And for a - I say this often. For a region with a 5 billion dollar food import bill, when we have the capacity to produce food and therefore provide some degree of food security, we needed to prioritize that. And so, this has put a much greater impact for us on agriculture, agriculture development- - particularly the production of food to ensure food security. It's also given us greater priority to institutions like CARPHA and CDEMA, which we've known have been important in the past. But now, we know that they have to be properly organized, supported, and enabled to work. And so, that has been happening with those agencies as well. So there's a plus, there's a minus. We've had a huge hit, but we've also had the opportunity in many ways to reconsider where we are and how best the change what we do, and how we do it as we move forward."
