PHA, Apdar, SMDC, SNMC, HPC and NAC budgets approved |01 April 2021
The National Assembly yesterday approved the budget for the Public Health Authority, Agency for the Prevention of Drug Abuse and Rehabilitation, Seychelles Medical and Dental Council, Seychelles Nurses and Midwives Council, Health Professionals Council and the National Aids Council.
The first entity to be considered yesterday morning was the Public Health Authority (PHA) with a budget of R60,702,000. This is slightly less than its budget of R61,713,000 in 2020, when the PHA’s budget was readjusted to cover expenses linked to the coronavirus pandemic.
The PHA monitors, evaluates and ensures efficient operations of public health laws. It also regulates, monitors and evaluates all health-related services and ensures they adhere to good practices in the interest of the general public.
Health Minister Peggy Vidot noted that PHA’s main focus throughout 2020 was dealing with the novel coronavirus but this did not stop it from conducting other essential duties under its mandate such as the treatment of HIV/Aids, hepatitis and tuberculosis (TB).
It further conducted various investigations and responded to non-Covid-19 related alerts and worked to prevent epidemics such as food poisoning, dengue and leptospirosis.
Despite the pandemic, public health officers have remained active on field conducting about 3,000 inspections at tourism establishments to ensure they have implemented the new hygiene standards to operate in the ‘new normal’.
With effort to upgrade the capacity of its staff, the PHA is this year enrolling some of its public health officers at the University of Seychelles and University of Mauritius where they will undertake a Bachelor of Science in Environmental Sciences.The Public Health Authority employs around 148 staffplaced in various units such as public health services, public health laboratory, disease surveillance and response, disease control, and registration and regulations.
Hon. Andy Labonte expressed his concerns over public health officers who still have to make use of public busses while undertaking home and work visit during working hours, which is not ideal for workers involved in the prevention of diseases particularly during this pandemic.
“Transportation has been an ongoing problem for the Public Health Authority and is a challenge when it comes to providing a satisfactory service. Each district has around one or two public health officersand their work demands they conduct a lot of visits and up until now we still have constraints with transportation for them,” stated Minister Vidot.
Public Health Commissioner, Dr Jude Gedeon, added that the PHA often calls on the assistance of the Health Care Agency for transportation.
“As part of being resourceful, our public health officers do sometimes take public transportation but these are exceptions and not the most ideal but if there is work to de done our officers are not afraid to commute in public transport,” said Dr Gedeon.
Dr Gedeon also spoke of the challenges in attracting and retaining qualified staff since the private sector is also recruiting people with the same competences as the ones PHA are hoping to recruit.
“This is why it is an ongoing battle to improve our salary packages, particularly for technicians who are highly trained and competent in their domain,” said Dr Gedeon.
In regards to Covid-19, Dr Gedeon noted that the PHA continues to remain vigilant and monitors the situation even as the country reopens to all countries with the exception of South Africa.
“Over the last months we have trained more than 1,000 establishments and services in the tourism industry, and evaluated their standards of procedure […],” he stated.
“We have already seen the benefits of the vaccination programme and we know that there will be more cases but they will not spread as fast as the recent months and the symptoms will not be as severe,” Dr Gedeon told the National Assembly.
Responding to Hon. Rosie Bistoquet on whether the PHA’s budget is sufficient, Dr Gedeon said that resources are generally never enough when it comes to prevention.
“But we do have a strategy to go about it, for instance the prevention of non-communicable disease strategy 2016-2025 has clear targets[…] but we do not only get resources from this budget but also through other organisations such as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), World Health Organisation (WHO) and Southern African Development Community (SADC) which helps plug the resource gap.”
“Communicable diseases like HIV/Aids, tuberculosis (TB) and others remain a challenge for us, even though 80% of deaths are due to non-communicable diseases. Last year we had nine cases of TB which take a long while to treat. We also have to deal with hepatitis B and C, letospirosis and dengue. This budget covers part of our responses while some resources come from the Health Care Agency,” said Dr Gedeon.
Dr Gedeon noted that the PHA has had to operate under a budget ceiling for laboratory supplies and noted that the authority might have to request additional funds during the mid-year review.
“We also have the option to conduct virement of funds from areas where the budget is not being used. Lab supplies are key in prevention because it is needed to test food, water and diseases.”
The budget of the PHA was approved with 30 votes in its favour.
In the afternoon, the minister of health presented the Agency for the Prevention of Drug Abuse and Rehabilitation’s (Apdar) R78.3 million budget ‒ the first such budget presentation by the health minister since Apdar has been brought under the purview of the Ministry of Health.
Minister Vidot was accompanied by principal secretary for health Dr Bernard Valentin, chief executive of Apdar, Geralda Desaubin and Dr Winnie Low-Wah, chief liaison officer at Apdar.
Apdar’s budget for 2021 has increased by R28.4 million, compared to its R49.9 million revised budget in 2021.
Its estimated budget for 2022 also expects to remain at the same level with a forecast of R75 million, and Ms Desaubin explained that the budgets for 2021 and 2022 include provisions of R34 million for the construction of Apdar’s rehabilitation centre.
In her introduction, Minister Vidot stressed that a lot has been achieved in the domain of addiction management in the country but a lot more has yet to be achieved.
“There seems to be a lot more danger on the horizon now that we have observed the increase in drugs more dangerous than heroin or cannabis, although heroin and cannabis are dangerous,” said Minister Vidot.
“Apdar’s mandate is to ensure to continue to reduce the demand for drugs in the country by reinforcing our prevention programmes and reduce the adverse effects of drug abuse on the individual and the society,” said Minister Vidot.
Much of the deliberations on Apdar were on the methadone programme and its budget was approved unanimously by the National Assembly.
The National Assembly also favourably voted on the budgets for the Seychelles Medical and Dental Council (R788,000), Seychelles Nurses and Midwives Council (R1,396,00), Health Professionals Council (R1,160,000) and the National Aids Council (R3,704,000).
Elsie Pointe