 and welcome to HealthFocus, a production of the Ministry of Health and Wellness. I am Fenel Neptune. Today we have with us the Chief Environmental Health Officer, Mr Pakar Ragnanan, who will provide us with some information on the Public Health Act. Welcome to the programme. Thank you and thanks for having me with you this this morning. Great. And we have been hearing a lot about the Public Health Act. Can you give us some information on this act? The Public Health Act was really enshrined into law in 1975. This is the basis under which the office of the Chief Medical Officer and that of the Public Health Board functions. As we know the Public Health Board is an advisory board to the Minister and the technical arm to the Public Health Board is the Division of Environmental Health. Under the Public Health Act enshrined in 1975, there were a number of different pieces of regulations that also came into law and this was as far back as 1978. This is what enables the the ministry to function and to have capacity to enforce. These are the regulations and some of the critical areas of regulation has to do with areas such as waste disposal, food safety, slaughterhouse regulations, dealing with barber shops and beauty salons, regulations that deals with notifiable of sudden diseases, so communicable and infectious diseases. It also made provision for regulations to deal with transportation of human remains. There are regulations that deals with bakeries, that deals with hotels and apartment gas houses and there are host of other pieces of regulations that came into force in 1978. Key under that Public Health Act, two pieces of regulations that I know have come to the fore of late. One has to do with the nuisance regulation and the other one is the offensive trade regulations. They have both been enacted and enforced from 1978. Okay and how often is this Public Health Act actually reviewed and amended? In the last 40 years or more, the Public Health Act has gone one review and that was in 2001. However, the review was not a substantial review and if you compare the 2001 revised Public Health Act to the 1975 Act, you would not see many changes. So it was a basic superficial kind of review. The only substantial review that has been done to the Public Health Act was done in 2019 and this review allowed for new areas to be brought under regulations. Some of these new areas include body art. So we know sentlusions have been doing tattooing and body piecing and so forth but that practice had not been regulated. So on the new Public Health Act it makes provision for regulations to be established for body art. Under the Public Health Act that was revised in 2019 as well, there is a new area that deals with smoking of tobacco products in public spaces and what this act has done now is to take measures to ensure that public smoking is prohibited and therefore it must be done on the very regulated conditions. So there are now regulations in place to deal with these areas. The revised act also deals with issues like spas and massage parlors and these are new areas generally. As well as with this amendment of the Public Health Act, there was a review also of the regulations that we mentioned earlier. So we're going to go more into some of these regulations because these regulations as well were amended. Okay and when was the last time the Public Health Act was reviewed and amended? So like I said the Public Health Act last review was in 2001. There were some regulations that were reviewed. For example the Food Regulations was reviewed in 1983. However many of the pieces of legislation including the regulations have not had a substantial review over the last 40 years. Okay and over this period have there been consultations with stakeholders? Sure. The amendment of the legislation both the Public Health Act and the regulations has gone through a significant process over a period spanning more than 15 years now. Okay. There have been different consultations at different levels including the government employing a legal consultant to review these regulations and to have consultations with key stakeholders and parties and to come up with the best mix for St. Lucia and that was done. Apart from the consultations there were discussions interministerially as well to look at what is the best approach in dealing with the regulations. One of the things that we found is that St. Lucia have had significant development over the last 40 years. Well we are actually due for a break so we will definitely have to take this break. We will be back in a moment. Wash your hands. Wash them right. With soap and lots of water get between fingers. Get under the nails. Go above the wrists. Do this for no less than 15 seconds. Rinse properly. Dry with a clean towel. If there is no water do the same washing motions with an alcohol-based hand sanitizer containing at least 70 percent alcohol. Wash your hands. Wash them right. This message brought to you courtesy the Bureau of Health Education of the Ministry of Health and Wellness. Welcome back. We will continue our discussion with the Chief Environmental Health Officer Mr. Pakil Raghman on the Public Health Act. Before we took the break we were discussing as it relates to the consultations and you mentioned that besides the consultations there were also ministerial reviews. Can you go in depth on this? Yes. So as part of the consultation process a number of stakeholders were invited to consultations. This happened over a period of time because the Ministry were looking at the review of two separate pieces of regulations or legislation. One had to do the Public Health Act until materiously the Quarantine Act. What we have seen is that the Quarantine Act for example has been enforced since 1945 so it's quite a data piece of legislation. Therefore we recognize that the Act impacted different sectors and as a result the consultation that were held were held with associations were held with other ministries agencies and so forth. And they were at different times and at different levels in terms of developing the final product for the amendment. But I was saying apart from just these consultations we have seen that the landscape of St. Lucia's development have changed significantly over the last 40 years. And as a result there was quite a lot of pressure being placed on the division of environmental health to respond to some of the developmental issues and hence the reason why it was so important for us to have amendment to this legislation. So think of the landscape in St. Lucia back 40 years ago. How many hotels did you have in St. Lucia at the time? How many restaurants did you have? How many industrial business places did you have? What was the kind of impact that was on the environment and human health back then? What we have seen is there have been significant development in terms of the the physical landscape of St. Lucia. What we have seen is there have been increased in terms of commercial activities. There have been increased in terms of industrial activities, institutional activities, agricultural activities have increased as well as an increased need for residential units, residential homes. What has happened is because of this development there has been encroachment on land use. So lands that were traditionally used for one purpose have now been converted into mixed use purposes and therefore you see there are challenges that occur as a result of the mixed land use policy that happens in St. Lucia. Importantly over the last 40 years we've we've missed an opportunity as a country I believe to have very clear land zoning plans and policies for St. Lucia and hence the reason why we see the impact of certain type of activities impacting livelihoods, impacting people's comfort living in their own homes and as well we've seen an escalation in the demands that have been placed on the country both locally and internationally. So all of these have from part of the development landscape of St. Lucia which has really made it important to have updated revised legislation to be able to deal with the challenges that ensue as a result of development. Wonderful. And some of the areas are amended. When we got to complaints received by the Environmental Health Division can you speak in terms of the numbers that the division actually received for complaints? Complaints is is one of the biggest challenges that Environmental Health Division faces. One is there is an expectation by the person who is lodging a complaint that the issues that are affecting them will be resolved and primarily what we have been saying is that on a yearly basis the department receives an average of 500 complaints that spans a number of areas. Many of them have to do with respiratory related complaints. What it is? So they talk about smells. So the smell from the pig pen and the smell from the barbecuing and the smell from the charcoal making and the odor. The smell from indiscriminate burning of garbage. That has been a major complaint. Along with that we have issues with regards to improper wastewater disposal. So very often we get complaints about a defective septic tank where wastewater from one septic tank or one sokaway is surfacing above ground. It's flowing in a drain. It's crossing somebody's path. Every time somebody flushed the toilet the smell again casted at my home. We have had complaints with regards to animal raring and people complain that they are animals. It starts from dogs, chickens, pigs and so forth and we get the complaints all the time. We get a complaint in terms of solid waste management and indiscriminate dumping of solid waste. These are some of the basic complaints that we receive and there is a high expectation of the persons who are making the complaint that their matter will be resolved. Sad to say that these complaints sometimes they take years and years before you can get a resolution. We've had situations for example where well I would have to cut you off just a little because we are coming to the end of the program already but I can definitely see that you have a lot of information for us. Well that's how we've come to the end of health focus. I want to thank you so much Mr. Fakal Ragnanen for providing us with this information on the public health path. Thank you. On behalf of the entire production team I am Fenel Netjoon. Thanks for watching. Until next time.