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She added that the One Health approach will also be part of the Pandemic Fund, which was created as part of the region’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, to be a catalyst for change and improvement in operating systems to allow countries to better manage the next pandemic. “The One Health approach was a requirement for the proposals that were sent into the Pandemic Fund. And it didn’t mean that agriculture did a proposal in a country, health did a proposal in a country, and it didn’t come together. It was supposed to be a joint writing of proposals.” St. John, the former Chief Medical Officer of Barbados, stated that countries would need to implement smarter healthcare goals, and CARPHA is already working with other regional agencies in that area. “ CARPHA , along with PAHO [Pan American Health Organization] and the Caribbean Institute of Meteorology and Hydrology [CIMH] , does a bulletin, a forecasting of the weather and the likely illnesses. When it’s Saharan dust time, they tell us about how to protect persons who have issues with respiration, like asthmatics. When it’s flooding time, they talk about how to avoid … water that might [cause] infection [such as] leptospirosis. And now that it’s the extreme heat time, they’re pointing out what parts of the Caribbean we need to put what interventions in place. “And there are also things like early warning systems to deal with the environment that are being worked on. This is under the umbrella of a PAHO project funded by the EU [European Union] that CARPHA, CCCCC [Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre], CIMH, that we’re all working on together. So, the solutions have to be thought of with
something in mind. It’s not going to work right away [but] it’s going to make things better for my grandchildren,” she said. W hile acknowledging that extreme weather patterns are not unusual in the Caribbean, Deputy Dean, Graduate Studies and Research Dr. Mike Campbell highlighted what he said are new phenomena affecting the population as a result of climate change. “We understand that heat affects mood, mood disturbances, and community mental health are exacerbated by heat. Suicide rates go up as temperatures go up, and so does violence. Violence of different types: interpersonal violence, crime, also political violence and cultural violence … are associated, over the long run, with temperature changes,” Campbell said.
plans: their plans for having kids, their plans for finishing school, their expectations about their livelihoods? Will they be as well off as their parents? “Also, the concept of solastalgia [which] is the kind of anxiety, sadness, distress that you feel when familiar landscapes have changed. The best definition of this is homesickness when you are still at home. I’ve been in Barbados since 2005, so I haven’t seen as much. But I hear friends talking to me about what beaches looked like in the 1960s and 70s and being very acutely aware and wistful about the changes they see in the climate,” Campbell stated. Head of the Public Health Group in the Faculty of Medical Sciences Dr. Heather Harewood raised the possibility of workplace interventions to cope with periods of intense heat in the future. “Do we need to shift working hours a little earlier?” she asked . “We think that it is important to identify high risk groups so that we can actually target information to them,” Harewood added. u
Dr. Mike Campbell Deputy Dean, Graduate Studies and Research
He added that researchers at Cave He added that researchers at Cave Hill are part of an ongoing, international collaboration examining the impact of climate change on the attitudes and experiences of young people, aged 16-24. “And so, concepts like eco-anxiety— that sense of unease, anxiety about the future [and] how does that impact their
Dr. Heather Harewood Head of the Public Health Group in the Faculty of Medical Sciences
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