 Efforts are strengthening the health care system in relation to infection prevention and control. IPC is underway following a five-day training workshop hosted by the Pan-American Health Organization PAHO. The advanced IPC training provided participants with the opportunity to review the infection, prevention and control policies and guidelines for health care services. Country program specialist PAHO Reynolds-Yewitt called on the participants of the training to be advocates for infection prevention and control and ensure it's enforced in all health facilities. So as you go through this week pay particular attention to the information you receive, condition your mind to ensure that the standards that need to be put in place are in place and all of us in St. Lucia, St. Lucia and the whole, will be a better place for your family and for your friends. We would like to hear that there's no more HIAs and communicable diseases occurring in our health facilities, but that's a vision. But we can ensure that the numbers are reduced significantly where person's health is protected. Chief Medical Officer Dr Sharon Belman-George says it is extremely important that the participants apply the knowledge gained from this workshop into their daily practices at the health institutions. So the training today, it not only looks at, a lot of it is evidence-based so we look at our specific institutions to look at what's causing the increases, what causes our health, the health care associated infections and looking at ways. So we're looking at protecting our patients who come in under our care. We also look at the measures to protect our healthcare workers because if our measures are not in place, all of our various levels of staff are also susceptible to getting sick while at the institution. And we're also looking at protecting the visitors and the families of the patients who are coming in. So we have to look at it at not only the patient, the patient is very important who we're protecting, our healthcare workers and other family members as well. PAHO International Consultant for Infection Prevention and Control, Catherine Johnston, believes this training will provide the participants with the tools needed to better incorporate the infection prevention and control protocols when providing healthcare services to the people of Central. So we are excited to extend that now in these training programs, teaching you, giving you the tools and the resources necessary to develop infection prevention and control plans that will improve the quality of care, reduce the number of HAIs that occur in your institutions, protect your healthcare workers to allow you to have sustainable programs. The training workshop focused on areas such as the monitoring and evaluation of healthcare associated infections, EGI, causes and prevention of EGI, and strategies for implementation of IPC practices to name a few. Reporting from the Communications Unit of the Ministry of Health, Wellness and Illegally Affairs, I am for the NIP2.