THE one week long RESPAC (Disaster Resilience in the Pacific SIDS) workshop heads towards the end of it’s one week study tour in the country.

The workshop accommodates the RESPAC project which is focused on strengthening early warning systems (EWs) and climate monitoring capacity as well as to strengthen preparedness and planning of ways to manage disaster recovery.

Yesterday’s discussion concentrated on the presentations of the four participating countries; Fiji, Vanuatu, Samoa and Solomon Islands on their initial findings and recommendations for support in terms of data quality and enhanced linkages between Met and Health.

In Samoa’s case in terms of capacity development they want to enhance knowledge of health workers on CLEWS (Climate Early Warning system) and hold a workshop on CLEWS for the health sector.

The two Samoan representatives Mrs Victoria Ieremia Fassili and Mr Tile Tofeano also mentioned some of the plans in developing their health climate early warning system which includes some factors like to undertake the review of climate sensitive diseases for temporal distribution of diseases utilizing the CLEWS and identify possible effects of outlook for diseases and identify common diseases.

Moreover, Mr Tofeano whom is an IT specialist from the Samoan Met office showcased the Samoan Met website which was developed in 2014.

He said that the website includes features like the climate early warning system products, climate outlook, weather forecast, earthquake and tsunami information.

In relation Mr Tofeano said that they have a mobile app which was developed under the meteorology division in the ministry of natural resources and environment in 2016.

He added that the mobile app contains all the weather information such as tide information, moon phase, climate information, earthquake and tsunami information.

As for Vanuatu, in the case of data quality and on ways to improve it they presented a few recommendations for capacity building of data quality.

Principal Scientific officer from the Vanuatu Meteorology and Geology division, Ms Moira Matou said the recommendations include essentials like running a workshop for training specifically for health workers and rainfall collectors and quality management service for VMGD (Vanuatu Meteorology and Geo-hazards Department) officers should be carried out twice a year.

The workshop has given participants the opportunity to learn from one another thus assist them in working towards the common goal of RESPAC.

Among the participating country representative at the workshop, also in attendance are the project’s consultant Mr Navin Bhan and project manager Mr Noud Leenders.