A need to go back to basics and take a closer look at parenting skills, early childhood education system, social engagement, civic communal imagination skills and leadership skills and see where the strengths and weaknesses lie within and where the threats and opportunities lie without.
That’s the view of prominent Kittitian internist, Dr. Bichara Sahely.
“Just like we cannot treat our way out of non-communicable diseases, we cannot police our way out of anti-social behavior. Throwing all of our resources downstream to rehabilitate physical, mental and social disease, without identifying the upstream causes of these life-dysfunctional pathologies, is not going to prevent the next unsuspecting victim of our pervasive dysfunctional and disorderly system,” said Dr. Sahely in a conversation on the SKNyahoogroups chat.
He said the Federation’s most valuable resource that is most at risk is our children, as they are the nation’s future and the ones “we will need to count on in our most vulnerable elderly years.”
“By not providing for them a life-enabling environment of respect, dignity and empowerment to actualize their life-potentials and life-capabilities to the best of the communities’ ability to till and tend to their garden of growth and development, we are in truth and in effect disrespecting them and denying them their inalienable right to having their longing for belonging fulfilled in the most meaningful way imaginable,” said Dr. Sahely
He is of the firm view that “we would have abdicated our responsibility and have created a culture that would have become factories of life-dysfunctionalities, manifested in anti-social behavior and non-communicable diseases.”
Responding to Calvin’s Beach post, Dr. Sahely wrote: “the recent spike may have been coincidental or it may also have been organized by our inaction and political unwillingness to deal head-on with the root causes within our nation and without.”