RISHARD KHAN

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

It's a strange con­cept in a lit­er­al sense but “vac­cine for crime and vi­o­lence” is how Min­is­ter of Health, Ter­rence Deyals­ingh, de­scribed the goal of next week's Re­gion­al Sym­po­sium to ad­dress Crime and Vi­o­lence as a Pub­lic Health Is­sue.

Speak­ing on CNC3's The Morn­ing Brew on Fri­day, Deyals­ingh ex­plained the goal of the sym­po­sium is to work with CARI­COM states to treat crime and vi­o­lence with a sim­i­lar vigour to the ap­proach em­ployed for the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

"Let's take the re­cent ex­pe­ri­ence with COVID. That was a pub­lic health is­sue. It had the po­ten­tial and did af­fect the en­tire pop­u­la­tion and the way to com­bat it was a whole of gov­ern­ment, whole of so­ci­ety in­ter­ven­tion to in­oc­u­late peo­ple, to get peo­ple dis­tanc­ing, to get peo­ple to stop the spread of COVID," he said.

"Ad­dress­ing vi­o­lence and crim­i­nal­i­ty as a pub­lic health is­sue fol­lows the same prin­ci­ples. It af­fects all of us, so there­fore, the re­sponse has to be one which in­oc­u­lates peo­ple and at-risk com­mu­ni­ties and at-risk in­di­vid­u­als against the ten­den­cy to adopt vi­o­lence as a way of life."

Ac­cord­ing to the min­is­ter, the talks will move be­yond ar­rest­ing and in­car­cer­at­ing peo­ple for acts of vi­o­lence and crim­i­nal­i­ty, and to­wards de­ter­min­ing the risk fac­tors for peo­ple to en­gage in these acts.

Deyals­ingh said da­ta from the health­care sys­tem will be con­sid­ered as part of pre­sen­ta­tions to as­sess the im­pact of these acts. He said da­ta shows al­most 400 acts of vi­o­lence be­ing treat­ed at the Port of Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal; 262 gun­shot wounds and 137 stab­bings.

"We'll be look­ing at the da­ta be­cause if you are go­ing to adopt a pub­lic health ap­proach, it must be da­ta-dri­ven," he said.

"That will give you some idea of the scope of the prob­lem, the size of the prob­lem. This is the phys­i­cal man­i­fes­ta­tion of vi­o­lence as it comes to our na­tion's hos­pi­tals," he added.

The health min­is­ter not­ed that T&T is not look­ing to "rein­vent the wheel" to treat the scourge. He said the sym­po­sium will al­low T&T to learn from the ex­pe­ri­ences of its CARI­COM neigh­bours.

"You're go­ing to have oth­er peo­ple who have done work in Bar­ba­dos and Ja­maica, in ad­di­tion to their Prime Min­is­ters com­ing to make pre­sen­ta­tions so we can learn from their ex­pe­ri­ence...and as I said, we don't recre­ate the wheel be­cause the is­sues fac­ing us are sim­i­lar from is­land to is­land. There may be nu­ances but they are sim­i­lar and com­ing out of that will hope­ful­ly be a way for­ward to deal with vi­o­lence as a pub­lic health is­sue," he said.

Deyals­ingh said at­tend­ing the event will be civ­il so­ci­ety groups, re­li­gious bod­ies, lo­cal non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions, law en­force­ment, health ex­perts, crim­i­nol­o­gists, CARI­COM crime ex­perts, and mem­bers of the CARI­COM Sec­re­tari­at.

The Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (CARI­COM) and the Gov­ern­ment of T&T will hold a Re­gion­al Sym­po­sium ad­dress­ing Crime and Vi­o­lence as a Pub­lic Health Is­sue, on April 17 and 18 at the Hy­att Re­gency, Trinidad.