THE Health of an individual encompasses not just the person’s physical welfare but that of the individuals’ moral and mental well-being, Georgetown Mayor Hamilton Green said last Wednesday.
He said that was the concept behind the hosting, that day, by the Ministry of Health in collaboration with the Mayor and City Council (M&CC), of a health fair.
Mr. Green said so when declaring the event open, in the City Hall compound on Regent Street.
Booths dedicated to Environmental Health and Vector Control; Meat, Food Hygiene and the Abattoir; HIV/AIDS Testing; Family Life Education; Sexually Transmitted Infections; as well as others mounted by the Ministry of Labour, Human Services and Social Security invited the general public to ask questions and get involved.
‘Urbanisation: A challenge to public health’ was the theme for the occasion and staff of the Municipality highlighted it on bright green jerseys they wore.
In his speech, Green said the Ministry of Health has been consistently cooperating with the M&CC with some degree of goodness and he advocated developing healthy habits from the womb to the tomb.
He said, once dirty habits are developed at an early age, they stay with an individual for the rest of the person’s life.
Green sad, while many tend to blame God for the diseases that are common today, the way persons misuse the environment accounts for most of the problems.
He posited that one can enjoy a productive and painless life by doing the right things in life.
Councillor Patricia Chase-Green, who chaired the proceedings, said the fair was just one way of mobilising actions for change in the context of littering, because the issue concerns not just the Government or the M&CC but everyone.
She said, when people litter, it puts more burden on the Public Health Department and is also largely responsible for flooding in certain parts of the capital.
“We (the Council) are only recognised as garbage cleaners but did not throw the garbage there,” Chase-Green maintained.
Line Ministries Coordinator, HIV/AIDS Workplace Project, Mr. Patrick Mentore said there seems to be no real appreciation of the related impacts on workplaces.
However, the Health Ministry’s representative commended the M&CC on making remarkable progress through being willing to learn, share ideas and look beyond the narrow, personal viewpoint.
Mentore said the fair is clear evidence that HIV in the workplace is a challenge to the Council.

Executive Director of the Health Sector Development Unit (HSDU) Mr. Keith Burrowes, who was also Commissioner for the Inquiry into the operations of the Georgetown Municipality, came in for loud praise, including from Acting Town Clerk Yonnette Pluck, for recognising the shortage of tools and assisting to the extent he could have.
It should be noted that, last year, the Government of Guyana, through the Ministry of Health, supported the Municipality with more than $700M worth of much needed assistance.