CASTRIES, St. Lucia – St. Lucia will host a five-day regional workshop as part of the World Health Organization/Pan American Health Organization (WHO/PAHO) flagship initiative for improving cardiovascular health.
Heart activity (PAHO/WHO photo)The two UN organizations said that the first Caribbean HEARTS Initiative workshop signaling a strong commitment of 17 countries and territories to improving cardiovascular health will begin on Monday, May 15.
The workshop will be held under the theme “Improving CVD Clinical Management and NCD Surveillance in the Context of COVID-19 through HEARTS Implementation: Lessons Learned and Plan for Scale Up.”
The organizers said that the event is designed to present stakeholders with a robust agenda that includes cardiovascular risk management training, improving clinical management in the context of COVID-19 through HEARTS implementation and developing a monitoring framework for NCDs for improved monitoring and evaluation.
Cardiovascular disease (CVD), mainly ischemic heart disease (IHD) and stroke, causes more than two million deaths annually in the Americas (North, South and Central America, and the Caribbean), WHO/PAHO said.
They said that hypertension, the main modifiable risk factor for CVD, affects more than one-third of adults in this region and as countries recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, there is an urgent need to continue to build competency to improve the prevention of CVD and the clinical management of persons with NCDs, especially hypertension and diabetes.
HEARTS is a global initiative and here in the Caribbean which has very high hypertension rates. It is led by the Ministries of Health, with the technical cooperation of PAHO which seeks to integrate the initiative into existing health delivery services.
HEARTS promotes the adoption of global best practices in the prevention and control of cardiovascular diseases. It also aims to facilitate better control of high blood pressure and promote secondary prevention with an emphasis on primary health care.
The workshop will be attended by over 55 participants, including HEARTS and surveillance focal points from the Ministries of Health, as well as PAHO facilitators and resource persons.
The objectives of the workshop are: to improve knowledge and demonstrate cardiovascular risk management; best practices shared for improved implementation in the Caribbean; an application plan for the hypertension control drivers; and a NCD monitoring framework developed to suit each country’s situation.
The Caribbean’s embrace of the HEARTS in the Americas Initiative has the potential for high impact in a relatively short period of time, PAHO/WHO added.
Countries with a longer track record implementing HEARTS, such as Barbados, British Virgin Islands, Dominica, Guyana, St. Lucia, and Trinidad and Tobago, have already defined their Hypertension Clinical Pathways, a powerful evidence-based tool designed to both elevate and standardize the management of hypertension and cardiovascular risk.
The UN agencies said that because heart health is everyone’s business, a public webinar for all of the Americas will be held on May 18.
