 The initiative is referred to as the performance-based finance mechanism and is a major part of St Lucia's Health System Strengthening Project. Performance-based finance coordinator of the St Lucia Health System Strengthening Project, Neyam Jabatis explains, this system provides incentives or benefits to both the providers and receivers of healthcare. First of all we want to reduce mortality from communicable diseases. In our case we are focusing on diabetes and hypertension. So this would be the overall goal, to reduce mortality and also if you want consequences of diabetes and hypertension. Jabatis notes the aim of the initiative is to improve healthcare in St Lucia, to produce positive outcomes to patients and to encourage people to utilize the health services. So there are two sets of people receiving incentives. One would be the, let's look at the most important persons, the clients. So the clients would receive free, for now, for now they would receive free laboratory testing. The persons who provide the service, what they would do, they would be receiving additional funds which they could use under agreed conditions based on their performance. So if, for example, we set a target and then they have achieved the target or surpassed the target, we're going to reward them or provide them incentives so that they can use that service to enhance the services, maybe to train their staff or to do other things. Performance-based finance programs are prevalent in many low and middle income countries but the system will be new to St Lucia. Reporting from the Communications Unit of the Ministry of Health and Wellness, I am Fenel Neptune.