BO­BIE-LEE DIXON

bo­bie-lee.dixon@guardian.co.tt

As COVID-19 vac­ci­na­tion cam­paigns be­gin in var­i­ous parts of the re­gion, in­clud­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go, PA­HO Di­rec­tor, Dr Caris­sa Eti­enne has re­mind­ed gov­ern­ments in the re­gion to en­sure there is eq­ui­table dis­tri­b­u­tion.

In PA­HO’s vir­tu­al week­ly press brief­ing yes­ter­day, Eti­enne said: “This is im­por­tant for the Amer­i­c­as, where there are mi­grants, in­dige­nous com­mu­ni­ties, and many peo­ple who live in rur­al and re­mote lo­ca­tions, with lim­it­ed care, have been es­pe­cial­ly at risk.”

With COVID-19 in­fec­tions con­tin­u­ing to surge through­out the Amer­i­c­as with 1.3 mil­lion new cas­es oc­cur­ring last week in the re­gion and more than 37,000 deaths, Eti­enne dis­closed that near­ly a quar­ter of the re­gion’s pop­u­la­tion was at risk of se­vere COVID-19-re­lat­ed in­fec­tions due to un­der­ly­ing health con­di­tions, such as high blood pres­sure, di­a­betes, and obe­si­ty. She said more than half of all glob­al deaths re­port­ed over the last week, oc­curred in the Amer­i­c­as.

As the world ob­served World Health Day yes­ter­day with the theme ‘Build­ing a fair­er health­i­er world’, Eti­enne said there was the need for the strong re­minder to the re­gion to act with a cer­tain lev­el of ur­gency to ad­dress ac­cess to its pop­u­la­tions who live in vul­ner­a­ble con­di­tions to pop­u­la­tions who have so long been ne­glect­ed.

“If we are to stop COVID-19 and re­cov­er in a sus­tain­able way, at­ten­tion must be paid to the in­equal­i­ties ex­ist­ing in the re­gion and we must be­gin to con­front and ad­dress them,” she warned.

She said the CO­V­AX mech­a­nism was de­signed to re­duce COVID na­tion­al­ism.

She ex­plained, CO­V­AX was a glob­al ap­proach to the pan­dem­ic to en­sure that peo­ple through­out the world get ac­cess to COVID-19 vac­cines as they be­come avail­able, re­gard­less of their wealth.

Notwith­stand­ing that it will take time to man­u­fac­ture and dis­trib­ute enough vac­cines to all coun­tries through the CO­V­AX mech­a­nism, Eti­enne said it con­tin­ued to be an im­por­tant ap­proach to re­solve some of the in­equities the re­gion faces.

Re­spond­ing to the ques­tion about how in­equal­i­ty in the re­gion has af­fect­ed the COVID-19 re­sponse, Eti­enne high­light­ed women were shoul­der­ing the bur­den both at home and at work.

“In ad­di­tion to car­ing for de­pen­dents, women rep­re­sent 70 per cent of our health work­force and many of them work as es­sen­tial work­ers in gro­cery stores, pub­lic trans­porta­tion, and child care fa­cil­i­ties. This morn­ing we heard from an as­so­ci­a­tion of home work­ers and how lit­tle at­ten­tion has been giv­en to them in terms of pri­ori­ti­sa­tion.”

She said chil­dren were al­so se­vere­ly af­fect­ed by the pan­dem­ic with 140 mil­lion chil­dren across the re­gion re­main­ing out of the class­room and falling fur­ther be­hind in their school­ing.

She said over the last year the virus had great­ly deep­ened the in­equities that long di­vid­ed the re­gion: “While when we have all been af­fect­ed by this pan­dem­ic. We have not been all im­pact­ed equal­ly and we must con­tin­ue to re­mem­ber this. As I said, to fight COVID-19 ef­fec­tive­ly, we must ad­dress these in­equal­i­ties and sup­port the most vul­ner­a­ble as they strug­gle to pro­tect them­selves.”