Bringing honour and prestige to The Family Planning Association of Trinidad and Tobago, Dr Jacqueline Sharpe, president of the Association and recently appointed IPPF/WHR board chair, has been elected president of the global International Planned Parenthood Federation.
Dr Sharpe was chosen by unanimous vote at a meeting of the IPPF Governing Council in Dakar, Senegal.
Her mission for the Federation is clear and in keeping with the sexual and reproductive needs of Trinidad and Tobago, as well as the rest of the world.
– In the face of growing conservatism in many parts of the world, as well as competition for resources, a great challenge is to maintain the focus of development efforts, as embodied in the Millennium Development Goals, on the centrality of sexual and reproductive health and rights for poverty reduction, she said adding:
– This requires that the Federation step up its advocacy efforts, in partnership with like-minded organisations, even as it expands its services in traditional family planning and the newer fields of HIV/AIDS and abortion.
Dr Sharpe has been a consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist with Trinidad and Tobagos Ministry of Health since 1976. She concurrently holds the post of director of the Governments Child Guidance Clinic and is the immediate past president of Caribbean Psychiatric Association.
Barbados-born, Dr Sharpe worked as a Registrar and consultant psychiatrist at the Psychiatric Hospital in that country before moving to Trinidad.
She has been associated with FPATT for the past 22 years and is recognised as a leading figure in the work of family planning and sexual reproductive health issues. Her work with adolescents and parents in the Caribbean is widely acknowledged.
She has done publications on child sexual abuse, youth at risk, the Caribbean family and diversity, and recently on the Convention of the Rights of the Child.
Dr Sharpe has had the distinction of being selected for several Prime Ministerial and Cabinet appointments, among them member of the Population Council of Trinidad and Tobago, member of the National Family Services Coordinating Council, country delegate to the UN Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, 1994, and to the UN Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, 1995, and the Hague Forum.
Kilde: The Push Journal
