Geisha Kow­lessar

New guide­lines may soon be im­ple­ment­ed as it re­lates to meat and meat prod­ucts en­ter­ing the coun­try.

A team com­pris­ing mem­bers of the Min­istries of Health, Trade and Agri­cul­ture is ex­pect­ed to be put in place with spe­cif­ic em­pha­sis on ex­am­in­ing the doc­u­men­ta­tion be­ing used re­gard­ing such im­ports. So said Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh at a cer­e­mo­ny mark­ing the In­ter­na­tion­al Day Against Drug Abuse and Il­lic­it Traf­fick­ing ob­served yes­ter­day. It was held at the Na­tion­al Li­brary in Port-of-Spain.

"The guide­lines have been be­fore T&T for many years. How­ev­er, the last ad­min­is­tra­tion did not adopt the vol­un­tary stan­dards be­ing put for­ward by the Coun­cil for Trade and Eco­nom­ic De­vel­op­ment. So the is­sue is not on­ly a Trinidad is­sue but al­so a Cari­com is­sue," Deyals­ingh said, adding that the team was ex­pect­ed to give the pub­lic a greater sense of se­cu­ri­ty in light of re­cent al­le­ga­tions that chick­en as old as five years was be­ing dumped in­to this coun­try.

But he said such a claim has not been proven.

"There have been claims and counter claims," Deyals­ingh added, say­ing that the is­sue of the im­por­ta­tion of meats and meat prod­ucts, for ex­am­ple corned beef, fell un­der four min­istries in­clud­ing the Min­istries of Health, Agri­cul­ture, Trade and Fi­nance. Re­gard­ing im­ple­men­ta­tion of the team, he said once the pol­i­cy was set oth­er agen­cies such as the US De­part­ment of Agri­cul­ture had to be con­sult­ed, es­pe­cial­ly since chick­en was sourced from that coun­try. "All these things have to go through diplo­mat­ic chan­nels so it would be dif­fi­cult for me go give an ac­tu­al time­line," Deyals­ingh added.

Re­gard­ing the is­sue of drug abuse, he said the re­al­i­ty of this and the traf­fick­ing of il­lic­it drugs placed a heavy bur­den on pub­lic health sys­tems in terms of the pre­ven­tion, treat­ment and care of drug-in­duced psy­chot­ic dis­or­ders. He said this year's theme of "Lis­ten First" for the In­ter­na­tion­al Day Against Drug Abuse and Il­lic­it Traf­fick­ing con­veyed the mes­sage that lis­ten­ing to chil­dren and youth was the first step to help­ing them grow up healthy and safe.

"It is no se­cret that drug use has been iden­ti­fied as one of the delin­quent be­hav­iours in which some ado­les­cents en­gage. The use of drugs at an ear­ly age is a prob­lem in it­self, but it may al­so lead to or at least be as­so­ci­at­ed with oth­er long-term health risk fac­tors. In fact, al­co­hol con­sump­tion is a lead­ing risk fac­tor for non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases world­wide," Deyals­ingh said.

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Ed­mund Dil­lon, who al­so spoke, re­it­er­at­ed the need for joint col­lab­o­ra­tion in the fight against drugs.

He said there were 91 ports of en­try iden­ti­fied through­out this coun­try and due to the large area this posed a chal­lenge for law en­force­ment of­fi­cials to pa­trol.

Al­ter­na­tive can­cer drugs

On the is­sue of the short­age of can­cer drugs, the min­is­ter ad­mit­ted there was some short­age of "first line" can­cer drugs but said af­fect­ed pa­tients were placed on al­ter­na­tive drugs so as to en­sure treat­ment was con­tin­ued.

He said this coun­try over the years had al­ways suf­fered from drug short­ages, es­pe­cial­ly pre- and post-Bud­get. A note was ex­pect­ed to be tak­en to Cab­i­net next week to come up with a long-term so­lu­tion so that the sup­ply chain for phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals would be more con­sis­tent than in pre­vi­ous years.

"The short­age of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals is some­thing that has to stop and if and when I get that Cab­i­net note passed to sig­nif­i­cant­ly al­ter the way we pur­chase drugs for the pub­lic sec­tor you will see much more re­lief."

He said the var­i­ous Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ties (RHAs) al­so have the au­thor­i­ty to pri­vate­ly pur­chase drugs.