Hello, I'm Delia Delore, welcome to the programme. When it comes to national healthcare, whose responsibility is it to inform you of the health services you are entitled to? The Ministry of Health and Wellness, yes, but you too have a responsibility to be aware of and to ask questions about the quality of healthcare and services that are provided. Stay with me as we bring you a series of programmes where I talk to doctors and nurses and personnel at the Ministry of Health and Wellness. I inform you about the services and achievements in St Lucia's healthcare and tell you about future improvements. I'll ask you questions, give you their answers immediately so you know where to go to if anyone you know needs to go for healthcare. This programme also reaches interviews in Creole. Now let's access healthcare together. Coming up, the Chief Medical Officer explains her role and the improvements in the health service, how awareness of health services and early visits provides peace of mind, how vital family and friend support is to AIDS and HIV sufferers, why the quality of healthcare is important, and we tell you about free diabetic retinopathy screening. But first, did you know that waiting times can be shorter if you visit it in the afternoon? You can even make an appointment at some health centres. Every video in this series discusses some of the preconceptions of the National Health Service and to give you the facts of the matter. If you attend a sexual and reproductive health clinic which is not an HIV clinic, no one will know what you're there for unless you tell them. St Lucia has many trained health professionals who have been trained in St Lucia and worldwide. We answer the other perceptions later, so keep watching. I'm with Ms Paula James and Ms Shirley Bissette in Dennery and I have one question to ask them both and the question is, do you know which hospitals and wellness centres or polyclinics that you could attend when you're in St Lucia? Yes, I can go to the St Jude Hospital, I can go to the Victoria Hospital and into the Dennery Hospital as well. Well, as Paula said, there is Victoria Hospital, there is St Jude which is my favourite hospital to go to and there is Dennery Hospital which is now a polyclinic but there are other polyclinics. For example, they talk about the Babonu polyclinic, there is the Gosele polyclinic and now there is the EU which I guess it's not fully in use but people go there too. You've both left out one hospital which is very close to you. Think of it, the St Jude Hospital. Yeah, that's right. But are you aware that you could go to any of the wellness centres in St Lucia?  Were you aware of that? Yes, I was aware of that. I am aware of that but for closeness you would go to the one which is closest to you. Were you both aware that the Dennery Hospital Ambulance Service is the fastest attending service in St Lucia? Really, I didn't know that. Wow. I was not aware and now you've told me, so I know now. Well, thank you both so much. You can contact us at the end of the programme and if there's anything at all that you need to know about St Lucia's services and the achievements of the Ministry of Health and Wellness, you can contact us there. Seeing this medical professional many times informing the nation, particularly when there are areas of concern and when there are new health developments, I met St Lucia's Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Merlin Fredridge-James at the Literary Health Centre where I asked her about her own office CMO and some of the improvements in St Lucia's services. The Chief Medical Officer is like the main technical health adviser within the Ministry of Health with responsibility for management of programmes and policy and programme development and many other aspects. But one of the key roles of the Chief Medical Officer is with regards to the health of the public, what we call public health. And there is a particular law, the Public Health Act, that speaks to various components of public health. Looking at communicable diseases, infectious diseases, looking at vaccine preventable diseases, water and wastewater issues. It covers a multiplicity of things. So the Chief Medical Officer is like the main technical officer with responsibility for improving the health of the public. What are the key issues surrounding health care that the public should be aware of? I think the public would be very aware when we are having infectious disease epidemics because they are obvious. Usually, many persons are getting ill at the same time. So it's very visible. So when we're having infectious disease epidemics like the flu or the dengue, the chikungonia zika, I think the public is very aware of that. But persons also need to be aware and I think most persons are aware of the fact that the main killers, the main causes of death and disability in St. Lucia are actually the non-communicable diseases. So these are the most silent diseases, hypertension, diabetes, heart and lung disease. So these are actually the major causes of illness in St. Lucia. So the public need to be aware of that. So yes, we need to take necessary precautions and we know when it comes to mosquito prevention what it is that we need to do, what we need to do to protect ourselves from infectious diseases. But we also need to keep in mind that the non-communicable diseases, lifestyle-related diseases, hypertension, diabetes, these are very serious diseases and actually the main causes of death and problems in our health care in St. Lucia. What are the recent improvements and achievements of St. Lucia's health service? Well, I think there are many when it comes to improvements and perhaps as a Ministry of Health we don't speak enough and showcase enough in terms of what we do and what we provide. And so when it comes to recent improvements, I would look at some of our core aspects. So we look at mother and child health what we call maternal and child health care. We know that we had an audit some time ago looking at the maternal mother and child health care system with the intention of reducing the numbers of babies who die or who are born with complications. So we call it perinatal mortality reduction. So that has been a major thrust of ours. So when we did the audits, certain gaps were highlighted and we have attempted to address this with increased training, with procurement of equipment necessary to monitor the pregnant woman to resuscitate the newborn and we believe that our statistics are improving. In time it will show the impact but definitely we're moving towards there. We've also had some, may recall that we had a schistosomiasis or bilazia survey quite recently. And this is a very important aspect for St Lucia because St Lucia is one of the few countries, probably in the Caribbean, that still have schistosomiasis or bilazia, although it is at very, very low levels. So it is not a major epidemic but it's still endemic. We still usually every year pick up one or two adults who have the disease. So we had the survey among school age children and we surveyed over a thousand children and found that none of them were actually carrying the disease so this is a big win for St Lucia. Of course it would be good to repeat the survey and maybe have a wider sample but I think we can say at this point that we have practically eliminated schistosomiasis or bilazia in the younger age population. I have a question for you now with the answer provided right afterwards. Then settle in for the Creole segment with the now next week. How many of these services are improvements in St Lucia's healthcare? A, maternal and child healthcare? B, perinatal mortality reduction? C, training and equipment? Four, schistosomiasis or bilazia known as flatworms? All of these services are available in St Lucia. The Ministry of Health has worked very hard for six weeks to provide public health information about the health services that are needed and also to develop new health services. One of the officers that I don't know is the Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Melinda Fredericks-James. He talked about the progress and achievements that I have done, and he has come to public health services. This is where I have done a lot of work, to come to public health services. Maybe people who have changed for a long time, like T-baby, the older the baby is, the more sick it is. The older the patient is, the more sick it is.  But unfortunately, we have a program that manages women who are sick, and manages T-baby who just passed away. He has been sick for this incident with T-baby and the women who are sick. We have a maternal mortality and perinatal mortality, so it's a jadison. We are still going to make the baby better, except for that, in the past, we had a perinatal audit that we had to keep in every way, every thing we did for T-baby. After the audit, we saw that the nurses, the doctors, had more access to the way to manage T-baby, T-baby who had a problem with what they had just done. We also had more equipment to keep the women who were sick who had just passed away. So we had to keep in every way. Before, we had to keep in every way, such as measles, such as diphtheria, so that we could get sick. But when we get the vaccine, if we don't get the vaccine, we can't keep the women who are sick. So we had to keep in every way. Dr. Malin-Fedricks-James was appointed to the Commission by the Circuit and was able to manage the situation. I think that the epidemic is very important. The epidemic is very important for the women who are sick, who have a big flu. We have a big flu influenza. The epidemic is very important because the epidemic is very important for the women who are sick, As you can see, there is no one to talk about it. And we know what we have to do to prevent migraines from emerging and to prevent other diseases from happening. But the disease that has affected us the most in this area, especially in this area, is the one that has caused non-communicable diseases. This disease can be a disease that causes pressure, stress, and a lot of stress. This is a problem that causes migraines. And we know that migraines are the way we live, the way we eat, what we eat. If we don't have enough exercise, if we don't drink alcohol, we can't eat tobacco and all these things will affect us. So, we don't have to travel to the city to get rid of these diseases. We don't have to go to the city to get rid of these infectious diseases. But we have to get rid of these non-communicable diseases, NCDs, pizza dough, pressure. We don't have to travel to the city to get rid of these diseases. We have to get rid of these non-communicable diseases, and we don't have to travel to the city to get rid of these diseases. When we are very tired, we have to get rid of these diseases. This disease can be a disease that causes a lot of stress. It can also be a disease that causes problems. We don't have to travel to the city to get rid of these diseases. after our bodies, what we eat, how much we eat, how we recognize symptoms of diseases, knowing where to go to for treatment and also knowing the services our healthcare provides. You and I have a responsibility to be knowledgeable and to practice a healthy lifestyle as much as possible. Prevention is better than cure. Did you know that one in eight people have died from non-communicable chronic diseases known as NCDs in St. Lucia? So, what is an NCD? And what services does St. Lucia's non-communicable chronic diseases unit provide? Non-communicable chronic diseases, as the name suggests, would be non-communicable, of course, means that you would not be able to catch it from somebody else or that it's not contagious. And chronic means that it is long-lasting, so non-communicable chronic diseases tend to be incurable diseases. They can be treated and controlled, but not cured. In terms of services, the non-communicable chronic disease department or the NCD department, it actually encompasses various departments for want of a better word. And we're looking at community nursing, the nutrition department, Bureau of Health Education, epidemiology, and what we do basically is to coordinate activities to get towards raising awareness of major NCDs and their risk factors, such as cancer, high blood pressure diabetes. We also look at data collection for NCDs and their risk factors. So we look at things like prevalence of particular diseases like diabetes, cancer, and we're actually in the process of implementing a country-wide survey which will look at the major risk factors for diseases like diabetes, cancer, and high blood pressure. And we're very excited about that because that, of course, will give us information that we could use to look at improving our health system and improving policies to get towards decreasing the prevalence of risk factors in those diseases. We look at improved prevention of NCDs as an NCD department. We do a lot of education of our population. We look at policies which can protect our population, especially when we're looking at the more vulnerable groups, such as children. So some of the things we're working on are policies that have to do with smoke-free spaces. So persons are protected from tobacco smoke, breastfeeding in infancy, which is getting towards improving the childhood obesity. And we're also looking at trying to get sodas out of the schools, what we call sugar-sweetened beverages, trying to decrease access of the school to the school students. We're also looking at, in terms of control of NCDs, one of the projects we're actually looking at right now is a project called HEARTS. And we are actually looking in the health centers, in our primary care facilities, and we are putting things in place to improve blood pressure control in our population of patients who is actually hypertensive. And that is getting towards decreasing strokes and heart attacks in that population. So we're doing quite well. The Non-Communicable Chronic Disease Unit works with other departments to raise awareness on how to treat cancer, diabetes, and other NCDs. True or false? True. Non-Communicable chronic diseases, NCDs, that affect the patient's health. And also for the health reasons, the Ministry of Health, who is also looking at treating the patients with the same treatment, is also looking at treating the patients with the same treatment. But the official medical officer for Non-Communicable Chronic Diseases, Dr. Cheryl Philbuth, speaks to the Ministry of Health to bring the patients to the hospital. Non-Communicable diseases, NCDs, that are not available in the world, but we are joining them. It's been a while since the last time I spoke to you. Well, our department is looking at patients who know how to treat cancer. And we have about eight or ten people who are suffering from cancer here. That's what we're doing. We're talking about women, about mothers. And our department is doing quite well. We're working with everyone in the department. We're working with the nurses. We're working with people who speak about education. We're working with people who have a formality. We're working with people who are watching and telling people who know how to eat. We're working together. Well, our department is working together. We're working with people who know how to do it. To know how to treat cancer. Who know how to treat cancer. I don't know how to talk about cancer, pressure, or what to do. I don't know how to share information because I don't know what to do. I don't know. I don't have any information. I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do. But I don't know information for those who need it. So, the minister has to look at this information to see how the people who have done these whisks, who have taken care of these diseases. We also have to look at these mothers, in the department, to see how they can protect the mother from the disease. We also have to look at these mothers to see how they can protect the mother from the disease. We have to look at these mothers to see how they can prevent the disease from spreading. So, we have to look at these mothers to see how they can eat well. So, the department has to look at these drinking glasses, to see how the mother is doing, to see how the health center is doing and to see how doctors there are coming, and perform the treatment in the health center. So, this is very important for the health center to know that this 100 company models have been developed in health centers. We are not able to properly maintain these healthcare centers. So sejoa no kagade ba yo kakui e hak sebe che no kagade kumane no sa poteje che pepset lisikijani presha kumane no sa fe semon sa e deyo ni presha yo plimee puyo pa juena stroke puyo pa juena maladi che kote yo ka mo sibit. So chute sebae sa no ka fe pu no e de pepset. Attending a sexual and reproductive clinic or an HIV clinic can make us feel scared and nervous and issues of stigma and confidentiality often prevent us from visiting clinics. But it's our health and to live longer we must take steps to educate ourselves and to face our fears so that we don't have to let the stigma hamper us. Our ultimate care should be about living longer so we must make efforts to be informed and receive all the help we can get. Support from family and friends also helps when we are faced with an infectious disease. The Infections Diseases Unit has responsibility for three main programs related to tuberculosis, HIV and sexually transmitted infections and Hansen's disease. And for persons who don't know what Hansen's disease is, we're talking about leprosy. In terms of achievements, one of the big achievements we have made is with regard to our sexually transmitted infection. We have integrated sexual and reproductive health clinics. We have one in the north at the Victoria Hospital. It's a community clinic and we also have one in the south at the Viewport Health Centre. The one at VH really became integrated as of March 2017 and I'm happy to say as of January 2019 we achieved the one at the Viewport Health Centre. So at Viewport Health Centre we went from a once a month clinic plus a once a week clinic to an integrated once a week clinic. And with regard to sexual and reproductive health we offer services to persons who are not only locals but also non-nationals. We offer confidential, non-discriminatory services and we have things like testing for sexually transmitted infections including syphilis, HIV, hepatitis B, hepatitis C. We have treatment for HIV. In terms of clinical management of HIV we do all testing of blood as routinely required or collection is done at the clinic. Medications are collected at various pharmacy points and in terms of collection of medications we usually inform clients when we are treating them where they can collect their medications from. In terms of TB while we do not treat for TB tuberculosis at the clinic we try to test at least persons living with HIV for TB. The unit itself is trying to bring TB out on the map. So in the show it's a low incidence country for TB however we are working with the goal that we want to end TB which is a World Health Organization strategy, the end TB strategy. So the goal is to end TB by 2035 so we are working along those lines. So in terms of our services we do not discuss a patient's details whether a patient has a disease or not and I say a disease with reference to TB leprosy which is Hansen's disease, HIV, syphilis, gonorrhea. Ethically as medical professionals we are all bound by an oath for confidentiality. So and legally we are not supposed to discuss a patient's details. So from my perspective personally having worked on the unit and from the perspective of the personnel I have worked with the idea is that we maintain a client's confidentiality and there would be repercussions if that confidentiality is breached and we actually find a professional who has breached confidentiality. The sexual and reproductive health clinic is an HIV clinic, yes or no. Other ministries certainly learning your unit infectious diseases. We are also working on three programs that are related to TB, HIV and Sexually Transmitted Diseases Epileprosy.  The other one is the lopital victoria. The other one is the sexually transmitted infections or HIV syphilis hepatitis BXC. The other one is the joint treatment for moon and HIV and the moon that is HIV is a phallic for tuberculosis. Met official medical for unit infectious diseases, Dr. Gilcajaro, is confident about the information Moon has visited a clinic sexual and reproductive. It is said that Dr. Ebernos has discussed the quality of the information of his Moon even if it is not related to panion. Sousadino, Cromer Clinic Sexual and Reproductive, known as Ceclicy. A, 4, B, 6, C, Yon, D, D. We have a C-D, Yon-A-Soud and Yon-A-Nord. Laboratories are the homes of medical discoveries. They assist in diagnosing disease mostly through analysis of tissue, cell and body-fluent samples. I asked consultant pathologist Dr. Wayne Felicien what are some of the services the Ezra Long Laboratory provides. The Ezra Long Laboratory at Victoria Hospital provides two different types of services, clinical laboratory services and pathological laboratory services. The clinical involves testing different types of blood samples, tissue samples and pathological involves postmortems.  They remove certain body parts and then we look at it under the microscope and try to tell them whether it may or may not be cancerous. Some of the services would include the chemistry or immunology section, the serology where we test HIV and other STIs. We also do microbiology where we test for bacteria. We test for some viral strains, especially with these cases of the flu coming on H1N1 that are around. Also we test for stools, parasites. We also have a blood bank service which collects blood which we need especially with the increase in violence and different pathological entities which require donation of blood and blood transfusions. We also have the hematology department as well where we check to see if people have high or low blood counts as well. What are the improvements and achievements within the lab? One of the improvements I think we've done is trying to implement an environment that is open with communication. We've tried to change the culture in where it is more customer oriented service as opposed to just machinery operated. We're just doing tests. We try to deliver a service that the customer can be confident in. We've also tried to change the different equipment that we're trying to do so that they're more robust and they're willing to stand to. We have equipment that has probably outlived its time and now getting new equipment would be able to help our what we call our turnaround time. In terms of delivering results, we wouldn't want the result in two to three weeks or months. At the Israel Long Laboratory, you will experience A. No communication. B. Improved turnaround time. The answer is B. Patients experience short-awaiting periods at the Israel Long Laboratory. The Ministry of Health and Welfare is responsible for the support of the laboratory. This is the place where you can do medical research and assist the doctors to discover different diseases in the world. One of the goals of the B. Class is the Israel Long Laboratory. It is for the doctors to be able to provide the best service for the employees of the company. The B. Class takes a lot of time to talk about health services because the B. Class is on the side of everything that the examiner has done. And the doctors don't have to do that. The examiner doesn't have to do that. You have to be able to do the B. Class. You have to be able to do the tests to see if you can do that. And we have to do all of that. We can do it in public, in doctors. And everyone can trust in the B. Class. And we have to do the tests. We can do it in the B. Class. Every time we do it. We can do it in the B. Class. And we have to do it in the B. Class. And we have to make sure that the B. Class is able to do that. That the B. Class will do well in the B. Class. But we have to be able to do the tests. The B. Class will do that. All of these are not the best for the work. And we have to be able to do the tests. And it is completely up to the doctors. I never talked to anyone who wanted to come to Tesla, to the doctor, and to everyone who did the job. I never talked to anyone who wanted to change. I never visited Tesla. I never bought the equipment that I needed to make Tesla. I never bought the equipment that I needed to make Tesla. And then I went to the doctor to help me with my diagnosis. If you want to go to the lab, you can join the first service. A. Yes. B. No. And then, yes. The quality of health systems and its services affect people, families and communities. If you don't know what services you have access to, how to receive them, and the quality of the services provided, then an individual concern can easily become a family concern. But then it becomes a community issue before becoming a national issue. You get my drift. But that's a common pattern that knowledge and education can break. These programs are important. It's one of the places the Ministry of Health and Wellness informs you of the services available, and it's up to you to use the services. I asked Quality Assurance Manager, Ms Ira Isaacs, how important the quality of St Lucia's healthcare is. When we speak about quality, we speak about a care that is affordable. It's accessible to the persons who need it. And although it's accessible, this is also what I would say safe. It's secure. It maintains their dignity. And it also provides them with care that they are satisfied with at a certain level. So this is what we call the international standards. So when we talk about quality in healthcare services, we are seeing the healthcare, the care that we give you, the services that are delivered are safe. It's accessible. It's affordable. And it is exactly what you want. It meets your need to ensure that you are healthy. And what are the improvements and achievements within your department? Oh, there has been many achievements over the past five years in quality. For instance, St Lucia has been making a considerable stride in the OECS with regards to quality. We have a quality department established at the Ministry of Health. And that department allows us to assess the care that is delivered to the persons with regards to the gaps that we have seen. What we noted is that we had needed to embrace the concept of being internationally recognized as having quality, safe care that is accessible and affordable for clients and that they are satisfied with. So we have now moved to creating international standards on a national level. So we have healthcare standards for both our healthcare practitioners and providers. What are the care that's supposed to be delivered to the first people? How should they feel about their care? If they're not satisfied, what can you do? Also, we have collaborated with the St Lucia Borough standard on this. They have helped us to improve our standards level in the sense that they have allowed us to collaborate with the healthcare professionals, with the people to find out what really were our gaps and how we can address it. We have also been in collaboration with Carford, the Caribbean Agency for Public Health, and they have helped us considerably in just the aspects of our labs, for instance, and the Caribbean Medical Labs Foundation. They have worked with us to improve the quality in the labs on a tier system. We have now moved to tier one, which means that the services are being improved. And it is so, we have made such considerable improvements that it is said by 2020 we can be accredited. Not many persons in the OECS can say that. Another thing is that we have created a quality policy, our national healthcare quality policy, that guides us in how we should be establishing quality, that guides us in what should we be doing, what requirements should we be meeting to meet the international standards. And this has helped us considerably. Also, we have persons speaking about quality in healthcare. If you really go back 10 to 15 years, this was some tough phenomenon that wasn't really popular, but now you're hearing persons from the government level, from the technical level, from the healthcare providers level. Even your clients, the patients, the family and community are talking about quality, and this is great improvement. I would say this is one of the greatest improvements that we've had. What is the expectations of the public when it comes to delivering quality services in the health system? So what they can expect is services that meet your needs, that fits you, that you are satisfied with. We are saying that you have a right to healthcare, a right to be healthy. So when we talk about quality, what it means for you is that as much as we have set standards for ourselves, we are saying this is the level of care that should be given to you, and if you are not satisfied, we are going to do our best as possible to ensure that we meet those needs. It also means that we are creating what we call a charter, a patient charter of rights. If we in any way breach your rights, we will be held accountable for it. And so this is important because many times our clients, our population, do not understand their rights, and we are saying for you to be healthy. We need to do our part in keeping you healthy, but we also need to empower you as well to be healthy and part of that is knowing your rights, and knowing when your rights are breached and what can you do about it. And also hold us accountable when we do not give you the quality of care that needs. St Lucia's Healthcare Service provides A. International standards on a national level or B. International standards on selected community levels. The answer is St Lucia's Healthcare Service provides international standards on a national level. Let's go to the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Health, to see where the services are available, such as Boma Shempui, Sennysov, and other international standards. I would like to ask the Ministry of Health's Quality Assurance Manager, Ira Isaacs, to tell us about the quality of the services. The Ministry of Health's Quality Assurance Manager, to see where the services are available to the public. To see where the services are available to the Ministry of Health, such as B. International standards, such as the Caribbean Public Health Agency, the Ministry of Health's quality national healthcare policy, such as the Ministry of Health's humility to see where the services are available to the public. The Ministry of Health's Quality Assurance Manager, to see where the services are available to the public, such as B. International standards, such as the International standards. Knowing about health services is essential to well-being. One of the major complications in diabetes is blindness. The Barbano Health and Wellness Centre provides a screening program where diabetics can get their eyes checked. If retinopathy is detected early, vision can be preserved. I asked Nurse Noble to tell us more about the Diabetic Retinopathy Screening Program. The National Diabetic Retinopathy Program is funded by the Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee Trust and this program started in February 2018 and is run by the Ministry of Health. Thus far this program, we have screening clinics at Cassius Health Centre to serve persons in the north and a screening clinic in Beaufort to serve persons in the south. At each of these clinics, we have clinics taking place on a Thursday and Friday. Added to this program is a laser clinic which is held in Barbano Wellness Centre and these clinics take place every second, Friday and fourth Friday of the month. Why is the program important? The program is important because we have a lot of persons with diabetes in Saint Lucia and diabetic retinopathy is one of the complications of diabetes. Initial stages of diabetic retinopathy, there may be no signs or symptoms so clients don't really know that they may have diabetic retinopathy until major visual changes take place. So we are encouraging all persons with diabetes even before the symptoms show up to get their eyes screened and check to see if there is any damage to the back of the eyes so this can be treated and this will help preserve their vision. The Ministry of Health would like to encourage persons with diabetes to come to the clinics to get their eyes checked to see if there is damage to the retina because the service is free. It's free at all the centres I mentioned to you and they should try their best to find out about it. They can call, they can visit the health settings and find out when do they come in to get their eyes checked. It is important because blindness is one of the major complications of diabetic retinopathy and if we can determine or we can detect retinopathy early enough then something can be done and their vision can be preserved. So I'm encouraging everybody with diabetes to come and get their eyes checked do their early exam and see if everything is okay. If diabetic retinopathy is detected early, vision can be preserved. True or false? If diabetic retinopathy is detected early, vision can be preserved. If diabetic retinopathy is detected early, vision can be preserved. The Ministry of Health would like to encourage patients to come to the clinic to get their eyes checked to see if everything is okay. The Ministry of Health would like to encourage patients to come to the clinic to get their eyes checked to see if everything is okay. The Ministry of Health would like to encourage patients to come to the clinic to get their eyes checked because if diabetic retinopathy is detected early, vision can be preserved. The Ministry of Health would like to encourage patients to come to the clinic to get their eyes checked because if diabetic retinopathy is detected early, vision can be preserved. The Ministry of Health would like to encourage everyone who has diabetes to go to the Health Center including CAST 3, ABV 4, medical clinic and get their appointment to get checked. If diabetic retinopathy is detected early, vision can be preserved. So if you want to get vision Prince, I'll help center and find out about the program, find out about the kids who serve in it, and make sure we'll check it out. I can't stress enough how important it is to get your eyes checked if you are diabetic. The screening is free and it's not painful. I asked nurse Dr Charles at the Barbara No Health and Wellness clinic to explain the screening process and how results are graded. Once the clients get to us, they go through what is called a registration process at the front where they would just basically register, give their names, and from there we do an educated process with them. And so we try our best to help the patients understand because the whole purpose of this would be futile if the clients do not understand is the high blood sugars that contributes towards the damage that takes place in the back of their eye. And so we have this talk with them where we educate them and give them an opportunity to vent and ask their questions with regard to diabetic retinopathy and what it's all about and what they're there for. After that they're called in where we interact with them and we basically take a few information about them in terms of the history, how long have they been diabetic, the family history of diabetes, and find out a few other things about their medical conditions. And then from there we basically go through an eye screening process with them where we do a visual acuity test. That is basically to give us an idea as to how well they can see. We've had clients who've come to us, they're actually blind and they can see, think that we could actually restore the vision and this is not the purpose of the project. So from there after we've done the visual acuity test to give us an idea how well they can see, we dilate the eye where we add an eye drop to the eye which would dilate the eye. And the dilation is to open up the pupil so that when we put them on the DRS machine that the machine could see properly in the back of the eye. A lot of the clients after we've dilated the eyes we ask them to go back and sit outside where they, in a waiting area where they keep the eyes closed for about 10 minutes. Now that 10 minutes is very vital towards the dilation of the eye and the entire screening process. A lot of them tend to forget to actually keep their eyes closed for the 10 minutes and so when we would have put them, they call them back inside and put them on the machine.  So we try to emphasize during the teaching the importance of keeping their eyes closed for the 10 minutes. And from that when they come back inside we actually put them on the DRS machine and we take the pictures of the eyes. The machine takes a total of four pictures of each eye. And from there we would have, we would interpret the pictures because we're all greater screeners we would interpret the pictures and we would refer them accordingly whether those who would be needing to see, who would need laser surgery would refer them to the Babono Wellness Centre. There are other clients, maybe they might have other indications and so we would refer them to the specific designations that they would need to do. When eye drops are put into your eyes and when you receive laser treatment it's painful. True or false? No, it's not painful. The most important thing is to keep your eyes closed for 10 minutes for proper dilation. The laser will not burn your pupils. Keep your eyes closed for 10 minutes for proper dilation for proper dilation. This is the only way to make sure that the laser system is in place for proper dilation. Let's take a look at what we've done. We've gone through the process. We've recorded it. We've done a T-Session. We've indicated what we've done. We've talked about diabetic retinopathy. We've also worked on the C-Co-Point which is a continuous blood cycle. This is what was damaged in the last few years. We've also tried to indicate what we've done with C-Co-Point. We've also done a screening. We've talked about it. We've talked about diabetes, obesity, and also about malady. After that, we checked the blood pressure and the blood cycle. We've also done a visual acuity test. We've also checked the blood flow. We've also checked the blood flow. We've also checked the blood flow. We've also done a dilate. We've also done a high-dropper. The high-dropper helps the blood flow. We've talked about it. We've talked about it. We've also checked the blood flow. We've also checked the blood flow. We've also tried to activate it. We've also done a DRS machine which is a good machine for the blood flow. To keep the blood flow so that we can know who's the blood flow is. After that, we've looked at the blood flow. We've interpreted the blood flow. We've also referred to our clients as part of the blood flow. We've interviewed them at the Health Center in Babunoa. We've also interviewed them as part of the blood flow. We've interviewed them for three months because they have 3 affectments. We've treated them for three months because they were screened. We've interviewed them for three months because they have different problems. So, I refer you according to that. Firstly, you can examine the diabetic retinopathy. You can guard the desire. A. We. B. No. We post lastly, we. Diabetic retinopathy screening is now available in St Lucia. It's one of the many improvements the Ministry of Health and Wellness has achieved so there's no need to leave the island. And it's a free service thanks to a collaboration with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. I spoke to Dr. Dara Burt about the survey. The diabetic retinopathy program has improved because as you know, it's a new program. We started in February 2018, so we're just a little over a year. And from the time we've started, we've surpassed our numbers. We've screened over 1,200 patients and we've lasered over 100 patients in the past year alone. And the numbers are growing constantly. When we first started the program, we only started with eight screeners and graders. Those are the people who take the pictures of the back of the eye and they grade the images. And now we're up to at least 16 fully trained and qualified staff. So in the past year, we have lots of achievements that we're very proud of. Can you tell us about some of the collaborations? As I said, this program is new. We started off with a meeting with the Ministry of Health and a team from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine because a grant was obtained from the Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee Fund. And with getting this grant, the team at the London School of Tropical Hygiene and Medicine they came down to meet with stakeholders including the Ministry of Health and we decided this is a viable option for St. Lucia. So everybody was on board and that's how we were able to start this program in February 2018. The Diabetic Retinopathy Screening Program provides laser treatment at the Barbano Health Centre. True or false? True. The screening program has treated more than 1,200 patients in one year. True or false? Our program Diabetic Retinopathy allows you to work with the Ministry of Health. Your doctor who did the treatment at the Barbano Health Centre, Dr. Dara Bout spoke with the Ministry of Health about the program. It started in April 2018. Now that the program has started, the Ministry of Health has examined more than 1,000 patients for Diabetic Retinopathy and more than 1,000 patients. I joined the clinic. In this program, there are also 16 Ministry of Health workers who I closely joined for screening and grading for Diabetic Retinopathy. This clinic can benefit from the Diabetic Retinopathy program in other countries. It serves the exam for Diabetic Retinopathy so that it can have a positive effect on the patient and it serves the laser so that it can have a positive effect on the Barbano. I look forward to sharing more services and the improvements and achievements of the Ministry of Health and Wellness with you very soon. In the meantime, the contact details for the services mentioned in this video follows. Don't hesitate to call your nearest healthcare provider to make an appointment. The quality of life really matters. I look forward to sharing more services and the improvements and achievements of the Ministry of Health and Wellness with you very soon. The quality of life relies on health. Make sure you're informed. Until next time, goodbye.


Hello and welcome to the tea of the day today. I have a special one. That's for stomach problems now This is a mix of two different teas from Morgan's brew tea company and the first one is peppermint along with a green tea and then the second one is a Nettle and fennel tea and then add it into that is a little bit of fresh ginger. Oh It's a good blend. It's a mighty good blend The thing for this is is that these all of five of these things I just mentioned are some of the best things if you're having some kind of stomach problems with indigestion or nausea Anything along those lines the only thing I don't have that was mentioned on the top of the list is liquorice So if you have liquorice root, that's another awesome one that you can use for any kind of stomach problems But these ones here is a brilliant blend if you can get this these five together. Hmm. It's good


FlexiSpot sent me a brand new Sit-Stand desk. But is it strong enough for me to get on and ride all the way up? Let's find out. My name's Jim and this is The Edge of Desk. Hey, John, it's Sam. I heard Jim's doing another desk video. Can you believe it? Ladies and gentlemen, that's welcome to the studio. Jim from The Edge of Desk.  I get a lot of comments about my desk or this bench and how wobbly it is. And it's been a running joke on my channel for quite a while now. Not to mention that really good computer desk video I did a couple months back. Trust me, I'll never live that down. It is such a joke between the community and my channel that we have decals and t-shirts, like you see here. And it's just hilarious. Even this guy makes fun of me. Dear Jim, we've told you before, step away from the desk. So recently, the team over at FlexiSpot noticed my wobbling desk and they offered to send me over the FlexiSpot ProPlus E7. This is supposed to be a very durable, heavy duty stand desk, even when it's raised all the way to the top. I can tell you that if it's durability is based on the weight of this box of just the frame, it's gonna be durable because this box is super heavy. But let's get this thing built and find out. I'll tell you what this time, if this desk is actually any good, I'll buy one. While I'm getting the boxes opened, I wanted to jump in. I've decided to build the frame on top of my current six stand desk. So you can see kind of how I like to use a six stand desk. I'm gonna have to lower this thing to keep building it because it's gonna get pretty tall. This actually came in two main boxes. This is the frame box and this is the top right here. And like I said previously, the frame box is crazy heavy. It's way heavier than the top is. Assembling it was very easy. Once I got it unboxed, I had to start with the frame. The frame went together very, very simple. Everything was pre-tapped, pre-drilled and ready to go. It was a little bit heavy, so I suggest doing this on the floor, not on the desk like I did here. Speaking of the desktop, the holes in the desktop were pre-drilled. That means all you had to do is unbox the desktop, set the frame on top of that, and then screw it into the pre-drilled hole. So that made everything super simple because everything was aligned and straight and ready to go from the factory. Once everything was installed, it was time to tip it up. This is where I messed up. I highly suggest you do not do this on another desk. Jesus, this is heavy. Woo, all right. The whole assembly of this desk was only about 30 minutes, so it was actually very fast to put together and that included the accessories that I'm gonna show in a second. Speaking of the desktop, they sent me the 72 by 30 bamboo top. It actually was pretty light and it looks really, really nice. I really like the look of this. It's a lot lighter than my old one, but I tell you what, I think it's gonna be much more durable and it's gonna hold up to the abuse we're gonna give it here on the channel. As part of the install, it came with a premium keypad that's touch. I installed it right back here and it has up and down arrows along with four programmable heights. So you can just kind of reach over and hit a button and it'll raise and lower all by itself. And as you can see, it's actually pretty fast. The other cool thing that it comes with is a child lock and that's awesome because my little guy loves to raise and lower my other desk when he was here. So I can just hit that child lock and he won't be able to do that. But then again, I'll be taking some of this phone away so I'm not sure I'll actually use it. Also, it comes with a USB port on the side for charging so you can charge your phone or a camera or whatever you need to right off the side of the control panel. I think that'll come in super handy, especially when we're doing stuff with a GoPro. I can actually plug the GoPro in and have it charge while I film. The frame of the table, if you saw when I was building this is made of carbon steel, which is super strong. It also has dual motors, one on each side. And I tell you the frame is the heaviest part about this desk and I can definitely vouch that it's much more sturdy than my old desk. You can't really rock this thing at all. And the other one, as you saw earlier was like wobbling all over the place. The other awesome thing about having a very sturdy desk with dual motors is it's very smooth in the motion to go up and down. So if you hit a button and it goes up, you could see this thing is fast, it's smooth, and it's raising very quickly. FlexiSpot also sent me some accessories to go with the desk, which was really awesome. One of the cool things about these desks is how customizable they really are. From the different color and size tops that you can get, the different material tops, from all the different accessories that you can mount underneath or on top or clamp on top, they're just a ton of stuff that you can get. They sent me three accessories. The first one was a power strip that mounts underneath the desk. I actually mounted this stuff when the desk was upside down. So you can see here, the power strip, I just kind of set it in place, screwed it exactly where I wanted it, and it was done. It's gonna be there, I can plug stuff into it, and that's gonna be great for testing printers and lasers, just plugging right in. The next thing they sent me was a really nice cable management system. It came with a cardboard template that showed you where the holes were. You put the template on the desk where you want it, and you kind of made divots into the desk, or you could use a drill and pre-drill holes. And then the mounting brackets went in and the cable management tray just kind of screwed into the side. It looks really nice, and it's gonna be awesome for keeping my cables kind of up off the floor. I love that. The last thing they sent me was a metal desk drawer. Again, super easy to install. You just kind of put it where you want and screwed into the bottom of the desk. It is nice, it has kind of a soft close so I can't really slam it. It hits that back and kind of pulls itself in. I don't know if they advertise it as soft clothes, but I can tell you I've tried to slam it a couple times and it doesn't. But the desk is nice. It's metal and it's gonna be very durable and sturdy for what I need it for. These were things that I actually installed myself on my other desk and I had to kind of source them and install them or 3D print them. I have some drawers that I 3D printed. But it's awesome that FlexiSpot offers these with warranties right from their website and you can order it right when you order your desk. And it's also great that they're very good quality too. I feel like they're gonna hold up for a long time. So now that we've seen a little bit about the desk and talked about the accessories that came with it and kind of saw how I put it together, it's time to test this thing out. One of the cool things is how low this thing will go.  And we're gonna test that. FlexiSpot actually says that this thing will hold 355 pounds on the desktop. Little did they know that I'm actually gonna get on this thing. I am gonna climb on this desktop and we're gonna raise it all the way to the top. There's no way that desk is gonna take his weight. He weighs like a small car. So you can see how low this thing is. It's literally about right at my kneecaps. I'm standing on a mat back here so I'm raised about an inch. But this thing is crazy, crazy low. Man, I just hope this goes okay. So, all right. How do I wanna do this? So maybe like, here we go. It's raising. It's going. It's a lot slower with my weight on here. It's going a little faster now. This is crazy. He's really gonna hurt himself or break the desk. Oh man, this is nuts. I'm gonna hit the lights. What do I wanna do? This is pretty awesome. I didn't think it was gonna lift me all the way up here.  Not too much cause I don't wanna fall. I am maximum height right now. I think someone better call an ambulance before it goes drastically wrong. So let's see what happens when I go back down. Oh, it's much faster. Man, this thing got me all the way up. I tell you what, I feel much safer on this thing than my other one. Let's just climb off. Oh God. There we go. Oh jeez. Well, I am glad that went well. It was not graceful and not pretty, but it went well. I'm every bit of 247 pounds today. So, okay, nice work, flexy spot. I guess if it didn't go right I would be testing their 30 day money back guarantee or maybe their 15 year warranty that they give you on this desk. It really seems like FlexiSpot is gonna stand behind their desks. And I really hope so because if I ever do that again I have, who knows? Not gonna lie, that was crazy.  I mean that other table was just whoa, whoa, whoa. Thank you so much FlexiSpot for hooking me up with a stable desk and maybe in my videos I won't get so many comments. Speaking of comments, let me know in the comments below how you would configure your desk. There's a link in the description and in the pinned comments. Go check it out, configure it and let me know how you would do it. What colors, what wood, what accessories, that kind of thing. I would love to hear it. There is one last thing I have to do and that is put my edge of desk decal on. They're super easy to put on.  Eat your money Sam, you might have to buy one of these because it's actually a really nice desk. Fair enough, it's not actually that bad is it? What's the link? Get your edge of desk shirts or decals or edge of tech shirts or decals, any of that, they're all handmade by Caleb. There's a link in the description for those as well. So get them while they're hot. And by the way, have you seen this video yet?


the energy man on Think Tech Hawai'i, Stan Osserman here, coming to you live and direct from North Kona, Hawaii, on the island of Hawaii, courtesy of Blue Planet Research. And Hank Rogers has allowed me to broadcast from this facility here, which is really helpful. And Paul Pontio, who's my guest today, is going to be on here shortly, but I wanted to start off with just a little bit of the genesis of this particular show. A couple of years ago, I had a guest on named Professor Nate Huggins, or Hagan's, from, I believe it was Minnesota. Now, he had a business background, and he was a financial guy on Wall Street. And he moved back to the Midwest to be a farmer and to teach at the university there. And he really kind of focused on energy. His main subjects were sociology-type subjects with his students. He'd get them to learn about the real world, the real world of finances, the real world of energy, and things like that. Well, his first slide that he brought up was a really interesting picture. He had his horse, a quad, his pickup truck, and a picture of him, all out in the field on his farm. And I said, so, Nate, what's the deal with the picture? And he says, then the subject of our discussion is going to be energy blindness. Virtually every human being in the United States and most people on the planet have no idea how much energy they use. And I told him, well, I know how much energy my house uses. He goes, well, you mean how much your bill is? I go, no, I use 21 kilowatt hours a day at my house. And he goes, you're one of the few people that could actually answer that question, Stan. Nobody really thinks about how many kilowatt hours a day that they use in their house. And that's really important. People are just totally ignoring the energy that it takes to run our society nowadays. He says, I'll give you an example. If you had three friends and you jumped in your car and did a road trip for 400 miles, so you lived on the mainland and you just wanted to do this road trip. So you guys went about 400 miles. And then all of a sudden, you know, you were low on gas and you pulled into a gas station and there was no gas. And then the attendant said, there's no gas for 300 miles around us.  And so now they were stuck because they all had to go back to work. And the only way to get their car, which was still needed, you know, they set a loan on it, was to push it. So here's the math. 400 miles, pushing it at two miles an hour is 200 hours worth of pushing. At 10 hours a day, that's 20 days to get their car back home for a trip that only took maybe five hours to get the 400 miles that they started off on. So five hours with gasoline or 20 days of pushing a car 10 hours a day with three guys pushing and one guy steering, that's energy awareness. And it's a real picture that we're just missing today. Today's society, we're seriously underappreciating how much energy dependent we are and how much we really do use and how valuable the fuel really is. And as a result, a lot of the folks today, they don't really have a serious, well thought out plan for how we're going to get into the future. And so I have a note here to myself that a bad plan is worse than no plan at all. And the Green New Deal is a very bad plan. We cannot just stop using oil cold turkey when energy costs spike, the cost of everything spikes. So if you start limiting the amount of fossil fuels we use before we have a replacement plan going to bring ourselves into a green energy sector, we're really hurting ourselves because it starts to drive up the cost of everything, including the transition to clean energy. Solar panels, wind turbines, electric cars, batteries, everything needs oil to be manufactured nowadays. And if you cut off the oil first and then try and make your transition to clean energy, you have a real problem being started. So here in Hawaii, a bunch of us have been thinking about how we could be a model for the world in Hawaii to turn us into a clean energy, but with a real plan. So we need a transition plan that government policies support and that the funding to accomplish it is really realistic, it's available. So like I mentioned, my guest today is Paul Ponteo. He's the Corporate Technology Officer here at Blue Planet Research. And he and I do a lot of work together on trying to come up with this plan with a gentleman named Yuen from the University of Hawaii on how we can get Hawaii to be the model for clean energy across the planet. So Paul, welcome to the show today. I really appreciate you hosting me here, not just joining me, but giving me a place to broadcast from. And we've got a picture we'd like to throw up there, too. And I'll let you explain what this picture is, Paul. Thanks, man. Thanks for having me. It's always a pleasure to be in the show. So what we're looking at right now is a picture of our Toyota Mirai, which is a hydrogen fuel cell EV. And on the right side is David Howard Donald's brand new first in Hawaii, all electric tractor. So this was kind of a we stage this as kind of a first date of these two vehicles meeting each other. All right. Yeah, that's that Mirai is the only hydrogen fuel cell vehicle on the island of Hawaii and the tractors only electric tractor on the island of Hawaii. So it's a pretty rare photo. It's the same tractor that Jack Johnson has on a lot. So there are two of them in Hawaii now. OK, what I'd like to do, Paul, is we talked a little bit about trying to be the model for the world and getting the world to look at Hawaii as an example of how we could use renewable energy to really make the transition and make it in a realistic way. But to start off with, let's talk about. Basically, what I see right now is we're trying to work on the grid, but we're kind of ignoring transportation, which uses more fuel than the grid in most cases. So if we want to really talk about the end state of what we're going to be doing in 10 years from now, it's going to be electric transportation and an electric grid all running off renewable. But that's a serious, serious challenge. So can you kind of frame that discussion? Like if we start off with, first of all, how are we going to get to all renewable energy on the grid? And then we'll talk about how we plug in electricity into the transportation sector. It all kind of boils down to what Chip Cummins said. And I still wish and use it over and over that there's no silver bullet that's going to solve these problems of climate change or energy crisis. But, you know, there's silver buckshot and we really have to use everything available and all of the resources that are available now through this, what is probably going to be a very long transition period to move off of fossil fuels. But a lot of people don't realize is that, you know, electric cars are great. But every time you plug an electric car into the grid, it's like adding two and a half houses. Tesla's cars have about a 90 kilowatt hour battery. The average house in America uses about 30 kilowatt hours a day. So that's three houses right there. We have a Nissan Leaf that's 60 kilowatt hours. So that's two houses. So the big issue is how do you make the infrastructure support that lofty goal of going full electric mobility on transportation? And when people ask me about my definition of sustainability, it is definitely three things. We have to have food security, agriculture. We have to take care of transportation and we have to take care of energy. So they go hand in hand on a lot of different levels. But going electric is a serious challenge. It's not just about putting up more solar panels and batteries. The actual distribution infrastructure is that's the weak point. So this is where hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles come in to help make that model work in the places where the grid can't support that. We can go to the classic gas station model of using hydrogen fueling stations and people can live in a condo and apartment house and still be able to drive an electric vehicle that way. So we need all of that to make it work. So you're right. We need all that silver buckshot to solve these problems. So the first thing we have to do is figure out how much electricity we need to generate from clean sources and what those clean sources might be. So in Hawaii, we're really fortunate. We got plenty of sunlight. We're near the equator, so we get more sunlight than the continental US year round because we get long days and long nights with a lot of sunshine. We have nice trade winds that can blow wind turbines. We have underwater currents that can push undersea turbines. We have geothermal power and we even have hydroelectric power from some of our rivers and streams that flow downhill. So we can make electricity, but how much electricity are we really talking about? So I pulled up some data from the Department of Energy, the US Department of Energy. And, you know, we have one major electric company in the state and then one co-op utility on the island of Kauai. And combined, they have to produce 10.5 terawatts of power. So what's that all, like one million or excuse me, 1,000 gigawatts of power? It's it's a lot of power. So so I sat down and said, you know, using kind of Paul's example, I said, well, if everybody used about 20 to 21 kilowatt hours a day per person times the 1.4 million people that live here, that equals 28.75 gigawatts of electricity every day, which equals 10.5 terawatts of power a year. So that's just without electric transportation. You throw in Paul's two and a half times or so the amount of energy you need. And that takes us to 26.25 terawatts of electricity that we're going to have to create from renewable sources here in the state of Hawaii. And as far as I'm concerned, we probably should be using a little bit of geothermal.  And, you know, but we're going to probably have to depend a lot on geothermal and maybe ocean currents and underwater turbines. Wind power, we've tried it here and it's not real popular. So I'm not sure how much we're really going to get from wind power. But, you know, Paul, right now, I mean, I don't deal a whole lot with the electric electric company or electric grid. And here on the big island, it's it's a fairly small. We've got like four hundred and something thousand people here, if I remember right. About how much power is the big island capable of generating under its current? Its current structure. Although the current structure are typical loads, about 180 megawatts for the big island. So to increase that, the infrastructure would definitely have to be increased at the same time. Unfortunately, the picture you're painting is not equal across all islands, just because we're all in Hawaii doesn't mean that every island has the same available resources. It's actually a very disparate situation where the largest island, Hawaii Island, has the least amount of people, but we have the largest landmass to be able and resources for renewable energy. Oahu, for example, where it's the densest population, has the smallest landmass compared to its population. And they're going to struggle to try to generate enough renewable electricity. So this is where the big island can come in to play to help the entire state, because we can produce enormous amounts of hydrogen that can be shipped to all the other islands to help support that grid by using more fuel cell electric vehicles for transportation, for both personal transportation, especially trucking and shipping and eventually aviation. It's going to be key. So Paul, some of our friends are just really sold on batteries. Do you think that it's even possible to have battery barges to ship all that energy from the big island to Oahu? No, it's definitely not possible. Right now, you know, trucking, for example, to go over Saddle Road from Hilo to Kailua or vice versa takes quite a bit of energy, especially when you're pushing a track classic tractor with a big 40 foot rig on the back. And batteries simply just can't really do it well. The problem with batteries and, you know, I think batteries are great. And they're certainly part of the buckshot. Most of the work I do surrounds batteries and hydrogen. The problem we have is that batteries can to like to drive on fairly flat level ground most of the time or be able to regen coming back down the hill. But they don't like temperature extremes. So luckily in Hawaii, we don't have to deal with that aspect of it. But, for example, if you go up Saddle Road in a BEV, a battery electric vehicle, as the battery starts to work harder, it starts to heat up, the resistance goes up and the energy gets used up much quicker. And I can give you a great example of a test that we did. We took a Toyota Mirai fuel cell electric vehicle. We took a Model X Tesla and a Nissan Leaf, all up Saddle Road for 10 miles at the steepest grade. The Mirai used 19 miles worth of hydrogen to go 10 miles. The Leaf took almost 55 miles to go 10 miles. And the Model X Tesla used 35 miles to go 10 miles. Now, where batteries have an advantage is on the regen because they have more reservoir to put the energy back into. The fuel cell car doesn't make hydrogen on the way down. It charges its very small battery. So depending on the mission profile, one could be better than the other. And certainly for continuing climbing or an extreme weather cold, fuel cells are going to outperform batteries. But for other applications, other missions, batteries, batteries are fantastic. If you can charge them from renewable energy. And the other thing that's a real big misconception in the electric world is that batteries are very, very clean technologies. And they're simply not depending on how you charge it. That's one thing. The other is the manufacturing and the components, especially the cobalt chemistries, kind of take away from that greenness that everyone wants to see in a battery. Fuel cells, I think, overall are a little bit cleaner from cradle to graves. You know, like you say, Paul, we and what we also don't think about is just the sheer spies of our transportation network. So, for example, on the road today, what, maybe 2% of the cars on the road today are electric. And yet, if we got the other 98% of the road, how soon will you run out of cobalt, maybe even run out of lithium just making that many batteries? Where if we had fuel cell technology, use a smaller battery and a fuel cell instead of solid battery packs to be all your power for your electric vehicle? Is that correct? I believe so. I mean, there's a limitation to everything. But, you know, we know battery technology will continue to evolve. It'll use less scarce material resources, eventually, hopefully. But the thing is that batteries will never, ever be able to come close to the energy density of hydrogen. Hydrogen can be as much as 250 times more energy dense than lithium batteries. It's the conversion and the making of the hydrogen. Those inefficiencies take away a bunch. But still, you know, what people really care about with an electric vehicle or a vehicle period is how long will it take me to recharge or re-seal it and how far is it going to go? So the inefficiencies of making hydrogen and converting it through a fuel cell, no one's going to care. It's just it's an irrelevant part of the equation and it's not the metric you want to focus on. And again, we need them both. And for anyone to think that one is better than the other is just being foolish because they have different mission profiles. That's all. Yeah, I think there's actually quite a few differences between battery and fuel cell. We do need both of them, but they both have certain homes where they seem to fit better. Like I see battery plug-in vehicles fitting more in the urban setting than in the rural setting or like you say in a hilly setting. And then, you know, you mentioned that the temperature issue on the mainland, there are some places in the wintertime get down to minus 20, minus 30. You know, Fargo North Dakota gets down pretty darn cold in the wintertime for several months like we used to joke about them only having two weeks of summer. You know, when you have a really cold climate and the batteries cold soap, what kind of performance do you get out of the battery in those conditions? And give it a really a really simple, recent example of that. So Hank Rogers rented a Tesla Model X in New York to go to Virginia to visit his father. And it was in January. So instead of getting the 200 plus miles that the Tesla is rated at, it got a little less than 100 miles. So he constantly had to pull into a supercharger and drink bad coffee for an hour. So trying to get another 40 or 50 miles of charge. So had that been a fuel cell for that particular mission, he could have filled up in five minutes and gone 300 miles or so. So it just depends on the application and the location that you're trying to use each particular technology. And there's also a lot of talk about not just cars and trucks. And of course, you mentioned how how the trucks, especially class A big trucks, if you want to run a long distance like they were, they typically run 800 to 1000 miles before refueling. And if you want to do that with an electric truck, you're going to have to carry so many batteries that you actually have to decrease your cargo capacity to carry just the batteries that are going to get you that 800 to 1000 miles. Or you're going to have to go with less batteries and stop every five to seven hours to recharge your batteries to go the next the next distance. And, you know, that's that's not very efficient. And here in Hawaii, we have a real strange scenario where we have airliners that come in from Japan or from Europe and even from the mainland and they have to buy fuel here in Hawaii. And airplanes, if you look at Airbus, Airbus is promised to have three airplanes on the market by 2035 that run on hydrogen. Now, whether that's liquid hydrogen or ammonia hydrogen or just pressurized hydrogen, they haven't specified that they're serious about it. And they've already dedicated a platform to testing those engines. But when it comes to aircraft, Hawaii is going to have to supply hydrogen to aviation and probably at some point even to shipping because the shipping cargo ships burn more fossil fuel and pollute more than just about anything else that we have in the transportation sector on the planet. So Hawaii is going to have to have a way of supplying hydrogen to parts of the aviation and the maritime industry probably within the next 10 years. And then certainly after that, probably more and more. So what do you think why these options are for making that scale large scale liquid hydrogen, ammonia or whatever to supply for aviation and for shipping? Yeah, I think we only have one real option to be able to get to that scale. And that's going to be geothermal even and biomass as well. Biomass is is a base load type of power 24 seven. And that's what you really need to make hydrogen. You need base load power and geothermal is absolutely the holy grail for making hydrogen in the tonnage that we're talking about. So we're not talking kilograms and we're talking tons of hydrogen. Right. So to to look at that picture, we're kind of looking at Hawaii as a model for for a lot of places in the world, because a lot of them have geothermal power. Japan is geothermal. The Western United States for certain has geothermal. There's communities, of course, in Alaska and the Pacific Rim, the whole the whole ring around the Pacific is called the Ring of Fire because of the geothermal resources available. So many Pacific Islands, including New Zealand, who already does a lot in geothermal Australia and many other places could definitely take advantage of geothermal power to produce energy. And then the energy can be in batteries or be turned into hydrogen for a multitude of uses. And when you're making hydrogen, you're also from green hydrogen from electrolyzers, you're also making oxygen. You have the potential to make ammonia for fertilizer and things like that. Right now, most of our ammonia and I mean, most of our fertilizer in the world is made from natural gas because it's cheap. But most of the countries that make it are slowly starting to run out of natural gas and they're restricting sales of ammonia. So even for the agriculture you talked about for food security at the beginning, you need to have the agriculture and hydrogen production is a good way to also produce stuff for your agricultural, your transportation and your grid storage and moving energy like between the islands, as you mentioned. Yeah, transporting hydrogen in liquefied form is probably the most common way to do bulk movement of hydrogen over distance. Another thing people don't really think about when they think about geothermal, they think about the big island only. And, you know, all the islands have some geothermal resources, just a matter of how much and how much it takes to get to it. But Maui, for example, even some of the other islands, if you drill deep enough, you're probably going to hit a warm resource. But the big island has the largest potential of renewable energy for all of those technologies, especially geothermal. So it's where we should be focusing our efforts to actually expand the scale of hydrogen production to supply the whole. So I ran an end here. I just remembered I pulled up some statistics on our population just so people can get a picture of how our state is. Our state has about one point four million people, which for a state is relatively small. I mean, Los Angeles is multi millions of people just as a city. But on in our state, almost a million of that one point four million live on the island of Oahu, which is Honolulu proper and our downtown Honolulu and our Campbell Industrial Park. All of our heavy power draws around the island of Oahu. The big island is the next most populated with one hundred and eighty six thousand seven hundred and thirty eight. Maui has one hundred and forty four thousand four hundred and forty four. The island of Kauai, which I mentioned, has their own co-op for their power and most of it's renewable. They're actually doing a great example on how to be renewable. They only have sixty six thousand nine hundred twenty one people. And then the remaining populated islands in the state are Molokai with seven thousand three hundred Lanai with three thousand one hundred and Nihao, which is a private island, has one hundred and seventy people. And they don't even have electricity. They have a couple buildings that are wired and a generator. But it's it's probably the smallest microgrid on the state. I think Paul, your microgrid is bigger than the one on Nihao. And so we do have a we're big enough to be a challenge with renewable energy, but we're small enough and and have the kind of test bed, I would call it, that would be perfect for showing different places in the world how they could use the different kinds of renewable energy, the different kinds of battery powered and hydrogen fuel cell in transportation for energy storage, for shipping energy. I think we make that we're potentially one of the best places to showcase hydrogen and renewable energy. So are you on the same page there, Paul? A little bit. I think I think you've nailed it. That's where we need to go. Microgrids make so much more sense than trying to do a giant central grid technology. And the biggest thing that we have available now that didn't exist in 15 even 20 years ago is that the technology now is available to do all this and to do it really well and to do it cost effectively. And that's the key to be able to to make it work and make it work for every day. Right. We talked a little bit before the show about some of the biggest threats to electric grids. And in Hawaii, it's mostly hurricanes and, you know, heavy wind storms, which topple trees, which power lines would take which take out a lot of our infrastructure, sometimes for a couple of days, sometimes for a couple of weeks, occasionally, like in Puerto Rico, when they got hit by the two hurricanes those months, because if your infrastructure is seriously damaged, transformers and substations, it's an awful lot of work to get a grid stood back up. So where you have urban populations may be more suitable for traditional grid, like on a Wahoo, but where you can afford to have rural populations on their own microgrids, it makes you more survivable. And and we've already shown that those kind of microgrids can can work with the right amount of battery and hydrogen for long term storage. They work quite well. And that's that is really the key. What you just said is that you really have to combine the two technologies in the right way to get the the optimal system for it to perform well and also to have that backup. You know, batteries are great for your immediate energy release and turnover daily. And then anything that is considered backup power or long term storage, that should be done with hydrogen. It's way more economical. They don't sell discharge and virtually last forever. So it makes more sense when you combine the two like like we do here, we have a combination of batteries and hydrogen fuel cells. I think that is the the most resilient that you can possibly get for for any type of condition. As long as we get hit by a giant rock from space. OK, well, I think that trumps everything pretty much. But Paul, thanks for being on the show today and maybe next week we can get David with his tractor and to talk about some of the agricultural options with renewable energy. I think that'll work. Yeah, I think he'd be real happy to describe his model for the coffee farm and agriculture of the future. Terrific. I'd like to thank everybody for joining us today and thank Paul and Blue Planet Research for hosting us on the show. And we'll see you next week on Stand Energy Map. Aloha. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn and donate to us at thinktechhawaii.com. Mahalo.


This is Witchspace News for Friday the 28th of June 2019, I'm CMDR Buur. In this week's news, Frontier hosts another Discovery Scanner livestream, the Enclave Interstellar Initiative is announced and we have a couple of notable community anniversaries. Remember to hit like and subscribe and click the little bell icon to get a notification next time we upload a new video. You can also come and join us on the Buur Pit Discord server, this is where we organise all our outings as well as squadron and community events and if you want to help support the work of this channel you can also join us on Patreon, links to both of those as well as all our social media feeds are in the description below and if you've got a piece of elite related community news you'd like us to feature, you can email us via the Buur Pit dot news desk at gmail dot com. Frontier hosted the latest of their regular Thursday livestreams last night and this week they featured another of their Discovery Scanner episodes where they explore behind the curtain and show a little of the making of Elite Dangerous. In this episode Senior Community Manager Will Flanagan was joined by 3D artists Jordan Clary and Pavel Pazinski who gave a fascinating step by step look at bringing the crate mark 2 from the drawing board to actual spaceship in the game. Suffice to say it's a complicated process but I particularly enjoyed the sections on kit bashing new ship prototypes together making sure that everything inside the ship like SLF bays and hardpoints etc all have an actual place and actually fit in a logical way and the generation of ship debris that is formed from the model of the destroyed vessel. They go on to talk about the destruction effects within the ship, the glass breaking and external sparking something I'm particularly used to seeing and also thrusters and other special effects. Discovery Scanner is always interesting as a series but this episode in particular really helped to underline the attention to detail that Frontier goes into with this stuff is well worth a look. While I'm on the subject of Frontier the latest Interstellar initiative was announced yesterday. This is the second of Frontier's new wave of multi-week community goal events. The latest is called the Enclave and centres around the gathering and production of the mysterious meta-alloys that the Thargoids seem so keen on. I won't go too heavily into spoiler territory here and it seems Frontier are a little more sensitive to that as well for this initiative but as with the previous initiative the Enclave is launching with an introductory video featuring Will Flanagan. This time however it's only detailing the start of the initiative and not all the steps for the event thereby helping to keep the thing a surprise, whatever the thing is. The video appeared in a forum post about the initiative and that post will be updated as we go along. The initiative itself starts on Thursday the 4th of July by your puny human calendars. This week saw some notable anniversaries within the elite community. Firstly Turgeon's Travels, the comedy drama series created by Commander Turgeon's Starstone had its 50th episode and the event was underlined by Turgeon making a video that delves into how the series came about and interestingly how it gets made. I was fascinated in particular by the 3D character models he uses and the lip syncing, the hours and hours of lip syncing. EDSM, the Elite Dangerous Star Map is 4 years old this week. This invaluable tool and database facility has become an absolute staple of the ED community, tracking commander movements, expeditions and discoveries all across the elite galaxy. If you've not seen them already I urge you to take a look at the EDSM traffic reports on YouTube, they are a fascinating insight into the often unseen back and forth across the vast expanse of the space we all inhabit. If you're not using and contributing to it already then there's a handy video by Commander Exegius linked below that'll get you started. And as a final note, the burpa itself, this very YouTube channel, was 1 year old on Wednesday this week. I put out my first episode of Witchspace News on the 26th of June last year. About 5 months after it started my wife Commander Rene came on board as our in-house camera operator. We now have a Discord server and host regular community events and outings. We love our little community, it's such a genuinely heartwarming part of our day with plenty of laugh out loud moments and we're excited to see it grow and develop alongside the channel and the game. Thank you everyone that's been following and supporting us this last year, there's so much more to come. It's a very exciting time to be a pretend astronaut. That's it for now, thank you so much for making it this far. We'll be back later this week with more videos. Until then, O7 commanders, follow the greens on the way out and do keep clear of the toast rack. We very much look forward to seeing you next time.