Home help caregivers in the Castries basin were the most recent recipients of training sessions on infection prevention and control measures aimed at providing them with the tools to perform their daily duties in a safe manner.
Health Educator in the Bureau of Health Education Janelle Alexander-Dupre says it is important that caregivers receive this knowledge on infection prevention and control as to ensure they remain healthy for themselves and their clients.
“The caregivers were the target group because they deal with the vulnerable groups. They deal with the elderly, the disable. Those persons’ immune systems tend to be weaker and because of that the rate of infection, if they do get it, it will be much higher for them. So with infection control and learning those measures, they are able to break that cycle and that spread and enabling the persons to be healthy continuously.”
Supervisor of the Castries North home help caregivers program Jamila Charles says she is pleased with this training and believes it will serve as a refresher for the caregivers on their daily practices in performing their job.
“On a day to day basis, we care for elderly persons who are immunocompromised, who are lesser able than the average healthy person and you find we come into contact with a lot of bacteria, germs, viruses on a daily basis. So, you find it is important for us to get refreshers every now and then to remind us of the importance of things like proposer hand washing, hand hygiene and protecting ourselves and not just the clients.”
Alexander-Dupre says this infection prevention and control training will not focus only on COVID-19, but also emphasize on other diseases.
“We also going to inform persons about monkeypox. Also, about other infections that spread including things like E-coli that you get through eating our foods because all of these things do cause sicknesses. It is not just COVID-19. We have a lot of different bacteria, viruses, parasites that can influence our health.”
The training focused on areas such as hand hygiene, sanitation and infection transmission, to name a few. – F Neptune