The Min­istry of Health re­ceived a ship­ment of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 12,000 kilo­grams of equip­ment for health pro­fes­sion­als.

The sup­plies were pro­cured via the UN Sup­ply Por­tal and the PA­HO Strate­gic Fund, which fa­cil­i­tates pro­cure­ment of di­ag­nos­tics, ven­ti­la­tors, and PPE for the COVID-19 re­sponse.

The fol­low­ing is a press re­lease from the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion/World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion:

On Fri­day 24th Ju­ly 2020, rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion/World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion Trinidad and To­ba­go Coun­try Of­fice, the Unit­ed Na­tions, The World Food Pro­gramme and the Cana­di­an High Com­mis­sion joined the Min­istry of Health (MoH) to re­ceive their ship­ment of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 12,000 kilo­grams of equip­ment for health pro­fes­sion­als.

The car­go con­tained Per­son­al Pro­tec­tion Equip­ment (PPE) for health pro­fes­sion­als, and com­prised face shields, pro­tec­tive gog­gles, iso­la­tion gowns, med­ical and res­pi­ra­to­ry masks, which were pur­chased by the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go (GORTT).

The sup­plies were pro­cured via the UN Sup­ply Por­tal and the PA­HO Strate­gic Fund, which fa­cil­i­tates pro­cure­ment of di­ag­nos­tics, ven­ti­la­tors, and PPE for the COVID-19 re­sponse.

This ini­tia­tive is the re­sult of sev­er­al weeks of col­lab­o­ra­tive co­or­di­na­tion be­tween PA­HO/WHO, the World Food Pro­gramme, the Gov­ern­ment of Cana­da and the Caribbean Dis­as­ter Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency (CDE­MA), which has de­vel­oped an ini­tia­tive to as­sist with the short-term es­tab­lish­ment and op­er­a­tion of a new in­te­grat­ed Re­gion­al Lo­gis­tics Hub for the COVID-19 re­sponse based in Bar­ba­dos.

The World Food Pro­gram (WFP) al­so played a crit­i­cal role in man­ag­ing lo­gis­tics to en­sure the move­ment of these goods for de­liv­ery to the GORTT.

The Cana­di­an Gov­ern­ment has made avail­able the RCAF CC-177 Globe­mas­ter air­craft – one of the largest mil­i­tary trans­porta­tion air­crafts in the world, to trans­port sup­plies  from the UN Hu­man­i­tar­i­an Re­sponse De­pot (UNHRD) in Pana­ma through­out Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean, in­clud­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The UN sys­tem and the Gov­ern­ment of Cana­da give the as­sur­ance that it will con­tin­ue its ef­forts in sup­port of the GORTT to mit­i­gate the im­pact  of COVID -19 in Trinidad and To­ba­go.