 Welcome to The NTN Nightly, I'm Nisha Charles. This edition stops stories. Educators discuss government plans for the education sector as the Eclipse program comes on stream. The Republic of China Taiwan supports the Department of Health and Wellness in bringing attention to the harmful effects of tobacco. The awareness campaign on dental health is capped with a comic strip competition. All that plus the latest in youth development, sports and the NTN Nouvelle Arquio. Spareheaded by the Ministry of Education, Innovation, Gender Relations and Sustainable Development, the Education Quality Improvement Project Equip is on stream. Funding for the project was secured from the Caribbean Development Bank, the CDB, through the Department of Economic Development, Transport and Civil Aviation. Equip formed part of discussions at the Turmini meeting of school principals and officials of the Ministry of Education, Innovation, Gender Relations and Sustainable Development. The Education Quality Improvement Project, Equiped, is geared towards the enhancement of St. Usha's education sector as envisaged by the government of St. Usha. The policy on education is centered around building a sector that is responsive to the diverse needs of St. Usha's children, young people and adults alike, developing graduate students capable of taking their place in the international economic and social community as well. One component of the Equip is enhancing capacity to improve teacher quality, relevance of education and instructional effectiveness across the education sector. This project also focuses on enhancing the provisions for special needs education in St. Usha. In fulfilling these objectives, short-term and degree-level continuing professional development training programs are provided for teachers. Among those opportunities is the undertaking of master's programs at the University of New Brunswick. Minister for Education Honourable Dr. Gail Rigabat updated educators on the progress of the program thus far at the Turmini meeting with Ministry officials. The team is currently on a study tour in Trinidad and they are very excited about reporting back to us what they would have learned from what I suspect is exposure to international best practice that can be replicated here in St. Usha. The Education Minister also indicated that due consideration is being given to the conversion of select secondary schools into six-form schools. Honourable Rigabat explained the rationale. We can afford more students an opportunity to do CAPE versus the limited number of a hundred or so who get to go to a level college. Let me repeat, it is an ambition that is not yet cast in stone because we will have to engage with the schools that are likely to be affected. I want to say up front though that we are mindful to ensure that there is good geographic spread. The Government of St. Usha has received financing from the Caribbean Development Bank, the CDB, equivalent to $16,192,000 towards the cost of implementing the Equipped Project. From the Government Information Service, Lisa Joseph reporting. The Government of St. Usha has adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. This initiative consists of 17 goals at its core, which is intended to build on goal-setting agendas and is under the direction of the Department of Sustainable Development. St. Usha, along with many other global leaders, made a commitment to promote sustainable development by signing on to the Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development, which has replaced the Millennium Development Goals or MDGs, a more robust and enhanced set of goals that focuses on people, planet, prosperity, peace and partnership. The Agenda is made up of 17 Sustainable Development Goals SDGs and 169 corresponding targets. Countries must now take ownership of the SDGs and develop strategies. The United Nations developed the mainstreaming, acceleration and policy support maps to guide countries in landing the SDGs' international development plans with technical expertise from the UN systems. St. Usha began engagement with the UNDP in 2016 with the aim of developing an SDG roadmap for the country. The Department of Economic Development has been actively participating in the 2013 Agenda for Sustainable Development. In St. Usha, we have sought to establish the strategic alignment between the SDGs and our development pillars as identified in the National Development Plan. The pillars were used as a springboard for the medium-term development strategy, MTDS, which is the immediate focus of the government of St. Usha over the period 2019 to 2021. The MTDS is expected to deliver initiatives across six key result areas, or what we call the KRAs, which emerge out of a process of consultation among key stakeholders. And the six KRAs as follows, citizen security, infrastructure, agriculture, education, tourism and health. To catalyze the process, the mainstreaming, acceleration and policy support maps' common approach is being adopted. This engagement aims to assist St. Usha in making significant strides towards achieving Agenda 2030. The Acting Permanent Secretary in the Department of Sustainable Development says the task ahead is a daunting one, but is also achievable through an all-inclusive strategic approach. To ensure that we positioned ourselves to pursue the implementation of the agenda, an institutional structure was put in place by establishing a Cabinet Endos Sustainable Development Goals National Coordinating Committee. Through this committee, along with the work done by other stakeholders, we have undertaken a number of activities aimed at guiding the implementation and the monitoring of the SDGs. The committee has been guiding the way towards the development of an SDG roadmap for St. Usha emanating from the maps' initiatives. At the end of the engagement process, it is anticipated that there will be an SDG integrated and risk-informed national development plan, the identification of development finance solutions towards meeting targets and a work plan for monitoring and evaluating the targets. As World No Tobacco Day approaches, the Department of Health and Wellness is bringing attention to the harmful and deadly effects of tobacco use and second-hand smoke exposure and to discourage the use of tobacco in any form, Anise Antoine reports. The tobacco epidemic is one of the biggest public health threats the world has ever faced, killing more than 7 million people a year. More than 6 million of those deaths are the result of direct tobacco use, while around 890,000 are the result of non-smokers being exposed to second-hand smoke. The Ministry of Health and Wellness recently launched its campaign for World No Tobacco Day 2019 and its partnering with the National Commission on Chronic Noncommunicable Diseases to bring attention to the issues of tobacco use in St. Lucia. According to the Tobacco Control Focal Point, Joanna Joseph, the trend is worrying. A lot of people believe that we don't have a problem with tobacco, yes we do. It is a very serious issue and what we are noticing is that our young persons are starting to smoke and they are smoking at even younger ages. Our last global youth tobacco survey, which is an international survey for tobacco issues, tobacco surveillance actually, indicates that up to a quarter of our young people and these are very young people ages 13 to 15 are already smoking and out of that almost 10% of them are smoking daily. So when we say that there is no problem, we know that this is not the case, our statistics are indicating that we have a major problem. This year's campaign is significant for the National Commission on Chronic Noncommunicable Diseases as it seeks to target the youth. The World Health Organization recommends that governments and communities prioritize tobacco control in order to achieve sustainable development goals target for one third reduction in noncommunicable disease premature mortality by 2030. The most effective measure to improve lung health is to reduce tobacco use and secondhand smoke exposure. However, the potential of tobacco control for improving health, lung health is highly underestimated. And this is why this campaign is important. By adopting tobacco and lung health as the theme for World No Tobacco Day 2019, WHO encourages parties to organize campaigns to increase the awareness on the negative impact of that tobacco has on people's lung health from cancer to chronic respiratory diseases and on the fundamental role lungs play for the health and well-being of all people. The senior medical officer for chronic noncommunicable disease says NCDs are a significant problem in St. Lucia where eight out of 10 adults die from chronic NCDs like diabetes, cancer, lung disease and cardiovascular disease. Tobacco smoking is one of the main risk factors for such diseases. And in St. Lucia, one of the trends with notice is that persons are dying from chronic respiratory diseases such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease where this individual has lungs but they don't work well and he or she is actually unable to breathe in a room full of air. And it's really sad. I've had the personal experiences of seeing persons less than 40 years old, which is pretty young, actually dying from diseases like that. Of course, we know that tobacco smoking causes cancer. It causes heart attacks, strokes, diabetes, raises the blood pressure. There really is nothing beneficial about tobacco smoking. And I just want to appeal to the solution public that if you smoke, you need to stop and that quitting actually lowers your risk for developing such diseases. It protects you and it protects your family members. World No Tobacco Day will be observed on May 31, 2019, with the focus on tobacco and lung health. From the Government Information Service, I am Anisia Antoine reporting. Means I'm the government of the Republic of China, Taiwan, provides support in the fight for tobacco control. More on this report from Miguel Morissette. The ambassador of the Republic of China, Taiwan, His Excellency Douglas Shen, recently presented a check value at EC $5,000 to the Department of Health and Wellness. The check presentation represented a contribution towards the World No Tobacco Campaign, aimed at raising awareness amongst illusions about the dangers of tobacco smoke to one's health and well-being. His Excellency Douglas Shen expressed pleasure in providing financial support to boost activities that will discourage the use of tobacco in any form. This event is of the observance of World Health Organization's annual World No Tobacco Day. Although Taiwan is unfortunately not a member of the World Health Organization, it is keen on fulfilling its responsibility as a constructive member of the global community and committed to work with the Government of Senutia, together with the non-government organization, to better promote public health, fight against tobacco and achieve WHO's 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Minister for Health and Wellness, Senator the Honourable Mary Isaac, thanked the Taiwanese Government for their gesture and says it will assist in the fight against the deadly effects of tobacco smoke and second-hand smoke exposure. What you are doing here today assisting us to spread the news, to spread the information, to continue to educate our people about tobacco is going to go a long way in our society to assist in this with the cost of health care as well as the cost of health for our people. We at the Ministry of Health are doing everything that we possibly can to try to encourage people to look at primary health care, preventative health care. So instead of smoking and then at the end of the day you try to treat the effects of that smoking, we want to call on the public, we want to call on all sentlosions to, in the first instance, protect your health by not taking off that cigarette, by not smoking anything. Deputy Coordinator of the Substance Abuse Unit, Joanna Joseph says, as the unit undertakes a series of activities for World No Tobacco Day, a call is made to fight the tobacco epidemic. This is a really important occasion. We've been trying at the Ministry of Health for, this is our second consecutive campaign for World No Tobacco Day to really bring our awareness to our people of the dangers and the need for us to do something serious about smoking. So this year we are going much bigger than we did last year and so the support from the agencies who have assisted so far, we have PAHO who's always on board and this year we are joined by your Embassy and we are very appreciated. World Tobacco Day is celebrated around the world every year on May 31st. From the communications unit in the Ministry of Health and Wellness, Miguel Morissette reporting. And this is the Indian Nightly. Ryan O'Brien is up next. Welcome back. We join Ryan O'Brien for the latest happenings in youth development and sports. Hello and welcome once again to your update on happenings in youth development and sports on the NTN Nightly News. I'm Ryan O'Brien. The Inter-District Primary Schools Female Football Competition came off at the South Plain Field on Wednesday as planned. School Sports Coordinator Isabel Alexander Markey was on hand to witness the initiative being promoted through the collaborative efforts of the Ministry of Youth Development and Sports, the Ministry of Education and the Saint Lucia Football Association. So there we actually witness in the the first inaugural competition, well it's a competition but then it's something that we started new in collaboration with the Football Association and the Ministry of Education for Primary Schools Female Football. So we have the an Inter-District Competition happening within around the island. We have the a northern zone which comprises of districts one to four and we have the southern zone which will comprise of districts five to eight. And so we have today with us districts one, two and four in this competition. What we're looking for is to build to assist in building the the female football in Saint Lucia and then the Football Association has taken on the mantle of trying to develop it from the primary school level and so this is what we are witnessing here. The first in many competitions to come of primary schools female football. Schools in the southern zone will be engaged on Friday May 10th for their competition. Physical education and sports teachers are among a group of participants benefiting from a five-day FINA approved level one open water swim course currently being held in Saint Lucia. FINA lecturer Stephen Cassidy is conducting the course. I'm thrilled with the participation of the course here you know to have so many physical education teachers be able to make time to share with us some of the strategies of open water swimming safety how we can build the competitive aspects of it but most importantly how you can use the great resources you have here such a beautiful island and of course the sea and the ocean you can't beat it. So far we've worked on a lot of the aspects of safety event management and administrative duties of the officials and this is an introductory course a clinic level so that we can introduce everyone to the aspects of FINA. FINA is the world governing body for open water but also to see what the needs of the Saint Lucians are. I believe that every Saint Lucian should know how to swim and the belief system of all of these teachers here mirrors that thought. Physical education teacher Tarek Edward of the Cicero secondary school is one of the course participants. We started a swimming program with our physical education and sports students specifically from threes and fours. We currently use the Vigibitch as the area for practice so this clinic will give us more insight when it comes to safety as well as technique and other skills which are fundamental and developing our students at the school. So we're looking at both competitive swimming and open water swimming as well. The indoor sessions for the course is being held at the headquarters of the Saint Lucia Olympic committee incorporated and that's your update on your development and sports for today. I'm Ryan O'Brien. Nisha. Thanks Ryan. The Dental Services Unit in the Department of Health and Wellness has launched the first ever dental comic strip competition as part of an oral health promotion campaign. It targets young adults between 18 and 35 years. It is meant to encourage young people to take charge of their life in a healthy and positive way. The unit wants the public to know that poor oral hygiene can be a symptom of disease or can set the stage for undesirous outcomes especially in their social interactions. Dr. Sherry Ifrim Lecomte is the senior dental health surgeon. The objective of the competition is to increase knowledge on halitosis inform on what it means to have halitosis how it can be prevented what it can be assigned of and more. The competition aims to encourage the competitors to do their own research on halitosis come up with a concept they think best encapsulates it highlight the associated impacts and how it can be prevented or treated and capturing it all in a comic strip. It's a way for them to create their own vision of such an important issue in a fun and exciting way. An exhibition of the submitted posters is planned at a place and time to be announced in order for the public to view talent and gain more insight on halitosis. The unit will conduct a survey to ascertain the impact this health promotion activity will have on the knowledge attitude and practices of the public. And that was the senior dental health surgeon Dr. Sherry Ifrim Lecomte. Stay with the NTN Nightly. Up next, Primers Hutchinson is here with the NTN Nouvelle-en-Cueil. Hypertension is a deadly disease that is common in San Lucia. We depend on blood pressure monitors to determine if our blood pressure is too high or too low. Should a reading on these measuring devices be incorrect we are literally putting our lives at risk. Doctors, caregivers and patients get your blood pressure meters verified by the San Lucia Bureau of Standards to ensure the accuracy of measuring devices. Look for a green pass sticker on the blood pressure meter at your next visit to the doctor. The correct reading can mean the difference between life and death. For more information contact the San Lucia Bureau of Standards at 4560546 or email slbs at candw.lc or visit the website at www.slbs.org.lc. San Lucia Bureau of Standards making quality and standards our way of life. Welcome back. We join Primers Hutchinson for the NTN Nouvelle-en-Cueil. Dr. Joyce Lynn Clark Fletcher, the studio NTN, will explain the significance initiative Nouvelle-en-Cueil and how it can help the Fletcher. So now Dr. Fletcher, the Nouvelle-en-Cueil is a place where a lot of countries make contributions to the development of the country. He said that the Nouvelle-en-Cueil will help the family and the Borel Commission. So that's why he said that the Nouvelle-en-Cueil will help the family and the development of the country. I am very happy to be here. I have been working here for a long time. I have been working here for a long time. My whose it? You can't do that. What about the Diaspora Committee, more than 45 million to 45, more than 45 million. So what is Diaspora Café We still have a lot of people on board out there. We declare that we will be able to settle this issue after the chain discussion. We will be able to encourage people to continue developing our country. Work for me, for the government, we can talk to these people. We can help them to live here. We can do business in our country. We can take people to the country. We can't talk about the government's mobilization. We can't take people to the country. We can't settle this issue. We can't do business in our country. We can't do business in our country. We can't do business in our country. Even trade. We can't do business in our country. We can't do business in our country. We can't take people to the country. We can't do business in our country. We can't do business in our country. I have published a paper about this issue. It said that we should spend $3 million on this issue. The organization that has brought us to Make It Happen is a foundation that can help the police and the people to increase their work. I have one more question for the women who are in the field of violence. That is domestic violence. It is a foundation that can help the police and the people who are in the field of violence. It is a foundation that can help the police and the people who are in the field of violence. It is a foundation that can help the police and the people who are in the field of violence. It can help the police and the people who are in the field of violence. It is a foundation that can help the police and the people who are in the field of violence. It is a foundation that can help the police and the people who are in the field of violence. It is a foundation that can help the police and the people who are in the field of violence. This is a foundation that can help the police and the people who are in the field of violence. It is a foundation that can help the police and the people who are in the field of violence. It is a foundation that can help the police and the people who are in the field of violence. And that brings us to the end of the NTN Nightly. Join us next time at 7pm with a repeat at 7am. You can also catch up with us anytime on the Saint Lucia Government Facebook page or YouTube channel. I'm Nisha Tras.