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| Minister Harris (left) meeting with Mrs Angela Scarborough, Dr Dave Schmeling and Dr Patrick Prince. |
Charlestown Nevis (April 5, 2004) -- Senior Adviser to Florida Association of Voluntary Agencies for Caribbean Action (FAVA/CA), Dr Dave Schmeling, who was on a half-day visit to Nevis Monday, met with senior Ministry of Health officials and social partners to assess their needs in the area of prevention of drug abuse.
His first meeting was with the Minister of Health, the Hon Mrs Jean Harris, in her office at Administration Building, Charlestown, where she updated them on some of the drug related problems that face the island. She pointed out that alcoholism was the single most leading cause of hospitalisation.
According to Mrs Harris most people look at alcoholism as a social event but “then it spreads further and people get involved in other drugs like marijuana and the other hard stuff since they have diminished levels of resistance and they end up getting involved in unsafe sexual activities which could lead to STDs and HIV/AIDS.”
After the meeting with the Minister, the FAVA/CA official who was accompanied by the Executive Secretary of the National Council on Drug Abuse Prevention of the Prime Minister’s office in Basseterre, Dr Patrick E. Prince, and the Council Member for Nevis, Mrs Angela Scarborough, met with social partners at the Pinney’s Training Centre.
Attending the meeting were officials from the Ministry of Health, Gender and Social Affairs Department, school guidance counsellors, the police and nongovernmental organisations, who were told that FAVA/CA is demand driven and that it is always ready to assist Caribbean countries in the area of Agriculture, health education and social services.
“We do not impose programmes on individuals in the field. FAVA/CA is your technical support agency for anything you can think of,” advised Dr. Schmeling, who reported that FAVA/CA, which serves in 29 countries, was founded in 1982 in the wake of the Cuban and Haitian wave of immigration that had great humanitarian and economic impact on the state of Florida.
Commented Dr Schmeling, who is a former vice president of FAVA/CA: “Florida really is a Caribbean state and the more we can do to strengthen the neighbourhood in the Caribbean, the better it will be for us up there.”
Dr Patrick Prince, who introduced the guest, said that FAVA/CA has been within the Federation for quite some time now, but more recently FAVA/CA has been coming to the Federation through the National Council on Drug Abuse Prevention, where it has undertaken a capacity building initiative.
He noted that FAVA/CA was also in the Federation to find out “what are some of your needs, you may have what you think that FAVA/CA can extend training in terms of technical training, capacity building. It is more or else a holistic comprehensive assessment.”
