…High Commission official

THE Australian Government’s ‘Direct Aid Programme’ (DAP) is intended to become “bigger and bigger” in Guyana, according to Senior Policy and Research Officer of the Australian High Commission, Mr. Clint Fernandez.Speaking yesterday at the Foreign Affairs Institute, Shiv Chanderpaul Drive, Georgetown, he urged that the local Non- Governmental Organisations (NGOs) take on greater initiatives with DAP and work along with the Australian Government in 2014/2015.
Fernandez is on a visit to Guyana and sought to provide a short briefing on DAP, which he described as a big part of Australia’s profile and presence in the Caribbean region. “We do hope to do more in Guyana both in the field of community health and to broaden our horizon to other things,” he said.
Fernandez added that for this reason, he had meetings with several government ministries ever since he arrived in the country.
Part of his outreach includes visiting projects that were funded in the past and he cited two that were highly successful in Guyana last year, both of which were in the field of community health.

LOCAL PROJECTS
The local project, valued US$17,000, is the outfitting of a special needs care and rehabilitation center in Port Mourant, which he also visited yesterday. Many people from nearby communities who do not have facilities end up visiting Port Mourant for assistance, he said.
There was also a training aspect to this project in which two volunteers were trained in special needs physiotherapy. “The capacity of the institution is now significantly raised with both equipment and trained staff, so we are really pleased to be involved in that project,” he expressed.
According to Fernandez, the other project was implemented here by the Cancer Institute of Guyana. It was a cervical cancer education and screening project, at a cost of US$20,000 that was run in collaboration with four other cancer societies in the region.
It was a regional project and hence in addition to the Cancer Institute of Guyana, the cancer societies of Jamaica, Dominica, Grenada and Belize were involved and it was managed by the Healthy Caribbean Coalition.
Fernandez said 1,835 vulnerable women were educated and screened for cervical cancer. In Dominica, 60 uninsured women were provided with vouchers for free cervical cancer treatment, 17 outreach workers and nurses were trained in administering pap smears and counseling, and 28 of those were right here in Guyana.
In addition, 22 community outreach sessions were conducted to build capacity in the respective cancer societies for future outreaches and 9000 materials were developed to support cervical cancer education.

(By Telesha Ramnarine)