The Pan American Health Organisation/World Health Organisation (PAHO/WHO) and Ross University School of Medicine (RUSM) have signed a memorandum of understanding to support capacity strengthening, advocacy, research and services for health in Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean.At a brief signing ceremony held at the PAHO/WHO offices in Navy Gardens, Christ Church, on Tuesday, Dr Amalia Del Riego Abreu, PAHO/WHO representative for Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean, said the new agreement, 18 months in the planning, should be seen as a positive step in improving access to healthcare and relevant health data across the region.She cited a PAHO study of its response during the COVID-19 pandemic, which revealed weaknesses in healthcare systems in the Americas, necessitating their strengthening through such programmes.Del Riego said: “There is a need to strengthen critical care in all of the countries … prior to the pandemic, the attention to critical care was not that big, but definitely that was obviously needed. The need to move from a medical centre disease-focused approach to a people-centred approach, [or] a community-based approach. That was also very obvious because we were dealing with a pandemic, a communicable disease by nature, but we could not really manage that in isolation. We all know that having non-communicable diseases made people more vulnerable [to COVID].“Thirdly [there was] a need to strengthen capacity for evidence-based decision making for public health. You will recall during and after the pandemic, all of the misconceptions, misinformation that continues to be circulated, [proves] that health systems need to be ready to strengthen that capacity to [combat it].”