The Global HEARTS Initiative has received a great push as the Ministry of Health, Wellness and Elderly Affairs continues with efforts to promote cardiovascular health.
In 2019, Saint Lucia was the first OECS country to launch the Global HEARTS Initiative in collaboration with the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO). The goal of the Global Hearts Initiative (GHI) is to reduce premature deaths from cardiovascular diseases in target countries by supporting governments around the world to scale up efforts on the prevention and control of non-communicable diseases such as strokes and heart attacks.
Saint Lucia’s training of health workers under the Global HEARTS Initiative was impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic leading to a suspension of training. However, Senior Medical Officer for Non- Communicable Diseases Dr. Shana Cyr-Philbert is happy to report a scale-up of training for staff of wellness centres on the island as of January this year.
“Every letter in HEARTS speaks to a particular module which is aimed at improving high blood pressure control, blood sugar control, and overall cardiovascular risks. And today we are here; we started as a country; St Lucia signed onto the HEARTS Initiative in October 2019 and we launched HEARTS because we found it very valuable for our country,” Cyr-Philbert said.
“HEARTS health as the name suggests, is a programme to improve our heart health. If we improve our heart health our whole body is healthy because the heart is the major pump that controls lots of things in our body. The slogan for our HEARTS in Saint Lucia is ‘Happy Hearts, Healthy Nation’ and this just means we are protecting our hearts through making sure that our blood pressure in controlled, our blood sugar levels are controlled, our cholesterol levels are controlled, that we’re mentally relaxed; all of this comes into the acronym ‘HEARTS’,” she added.
According to Dr. Cyr-Philbert, over the past ten years, cardiovascular diseases such as strokes and heart- attacks have been the main killers, accounting for about 30 percent of deaths in Saint Lucia.
Recently, representatives of 12 wellness centres underwent training in capacity building and according to Dr. Cyr-Philbert, the ministry intends to train more staff as part of efforts to improve the quality of health, thus achieving a reduction in cardiovascular events and hospitalization.