BRYNA BRENNAN, Chief of the Office of Public Information at the Pan-American Health Organisation (PAHO), the regional arm of the United Nations World Health Organisation (WHO), has been working to promote healthy lifestyle in the region.
Although only with the 100 year-old organisation for the past seven years, she has been helping to advance PAHO's mandate of strengthening health services in the region to reduce the environmental conditions that cause diseases; develop programmes for the control of selected chronic non-communicable diseases; institute community-based nutrition programmes; immunise against diseases, among other things.
Ms. Brennan was in the island recently to attend a cultural presentation paying tribute to outgoing Regional Director, Sir George Alleyne.
Ms. Brennan, who describes herself as an "international civil servant" joined the PAHO family in August 1995, after spending most of her working life in the field of journalism. She says that her life in journalism prepared her for her current duties.
Her resume reads like a National Geographic explorer of the Americas. She started out as a reporter for a local reporter for a local paper in New York, then went on to become an editor in New York on the Associated Press's International Desk. From there she was transferred to Brazil to serve as a correspondent and from there she moved to El Salvador and Nicaragua. Later, she became a Co-ordinator/Visiting Professor for Florida International University in Panama City, Panama. She also served as Director for the Centre for Foreign Journalists in Reston, Virginia.
"When I was a reporter with the Associated Press, I worked all over Central America and I developed a deep interest with the people of the Americas in general", she explains. "At a point in my life, seven years ago, it seemed right to join PAHO, which has such a tremendous mission in improving the health of the people in the Americas," she adds.
Ms. Brennan says that life at her office has been hectic since January due to the Centennial celebrations by handling their own activities during the years to commemorate the special occasion.
Outlining some of the events organised by her office, Ms. Brennan says that there was a specially constructed Centen-nial page on the PAHO website that has a list of all the activities for the year. In addition, she says that her office has organised "everything from big scientific meetings and technical discussions to photo books and special edition magazines."
"We even had a special Caribbean quilt which was transported around the Caribbean and several video public announcements disseminated throughout the region, so overall, it has been quite a year," she adds.
Amidst all the celebrations, Ms. Brennan says, the PAHO family has to come to terms with the fact that Sir George Alleyne will be demitting office on February 1, 2003. "Although he has assured us that he will be working up to the very last day of his tenure, he will be terribly missed," she says.
She describes the Regional Director as a "terrific person because he epitomised the essence of PAHO."
"Sir George represents everything good about the mission of the PAHO and working for the people of the Americas. He is so respected by every person and every nation in the Americas," she adds.
Speaking on the impact that PAHO has had in the Americas, Ms. Brennan says that the organisation had made "tremendous progress working with countries in the Americas on special priority projects such as reducing maternal and infant mortality." This was in addition to "other projects involving AIDS such as reducing mother to child transmission of HIV/AIDS and, special initiatives on the integrated management of childhood illnesses over the last four years to save the lives of 25,000 children in the region," she notes.
Stating that there was "a really good trend going on for most part" at PAHO in terms of improving health of people in the region, Ms. Brennan admits that "there was still a lot of work to be done." She says she sees her job as a vehicle to effect more change.
"On the personal front, I see part of my job as an avenue to make people of the Americas aware of health and not just health promotion," she says. "All of what this implies, was that people too often tend to emphasise health promotion as opposed to actually teaching people ways to protect themselves from chronic diseases such as diabetes," she adds.
