For­mer di­rec­tor of the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (PA­HO), Dr Caris­sa Eti­enne has passed away. PA­HO con­firmed the news in a me­dia re­lease this morn­ing.

“It is with great sor­row that the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (PA­HO) in­forms of the pass­ing of Di­rec­tor Emer­i­tus Dr. Caris­sa F. Eti­enne,” it said.

PA­HO said Dr. Caris­sa F. Eti­enne, a na­tive of Do­mini­ca, served as Di­rec­tor of PA­HO and Re­gion­al Di­rec­tor of the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (WHO) for the Amer­i­c­as from Feb­ru­ary 2013 to Jan­u­ary 2023.

“Caris­sa was a dear friend and col­league, and un­der her stead­fast lead­er­ship and guid­ance, PA­HO achieved sig­nif­i­cant mile­stones for the re­gion of the Amer­i­c­as while fac­ing one of our great­est pub­lic health chal­lenges with COVID-19,” PA­HO Di­rec­tor Dr. Jar­bas Bar­bosa said. “I am very sad­dened by her pass­ing, and my thoughts are with her fam­i­ly, friends and all of us at PA­HO who cared deeply for her.”

The re­lease stat­ed that dur­ing Dr. Eti­enne’s tenure, PA­HO led the re­sponse to the un­prece­dent­ed COVID-19 pan­dem­ic in the re­gion of the Amer­i­c­as, as well as ef­forts to con­trol Zi­ka and chikun­gun­ya epi­demics and cholera and yel­low fever out­breaks in Haiti and Brazil, while sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­prov­ing the Or­ga­ni­za­tion’s re­sponse to emer­gen­cies and dis­as­ters with­in 48 hours.

It said un­der her lead­er­ship, the Amer­i­c­as elim­i­nat­ed the en­dem­ic trans­mis­sion of measles, rubel­la, and con­gen­i­tal rubel­la syn­drome, and made con­sid­er­able strides in the pre­ven­tion and con­trol of chron­ic non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases. Leg­isla­tive and reg­u­la­to­ry mech­a­nisms gained trac­tion, as coun­tries en­act­ed leg­is­la­tion on the la­belling of food prod­ucts and in­tro­duced tax­es on sug­ar-sweet­ened bev­er­ages.

PA­HO added that ad­vances were al­so made in strength­en­ing na­tion­al health sys­tems and in progress to­ward uni­ver­sal health.

“In the last five years of Dr. Eti­enne’s man­date, de­liv­er­ies by skilled birth at­ten­dants in­creased from 95% to near­ly 100% and, for the first time, the Re­gion of the Amer­i­c­as reached the rec­om­mend­ed tar­get of 25 physi­cians and nurs­es per 10,000 peo­ple,” PA­HO said.