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Directie Volksgezondheid

Active in these sectors:

Provides services for: Children, Youngsters, Elderly, Adults, Parents

To promote health and the physical, mental and social well-being, to prevent diseases, lesions and disabilities, to provide for the essential conditions to create an environment within which the entire Aruban community can live a healthy life, with a sense of responsibility for one's own health.

Purpose of the organization

Youth Healthcare Division
Its main duty is to provide preventive care to children between the ages of 0 to 18 by monitoring their growth and development and stimulating their health. To give advice to parents and to take care of vaccinating/protecting children against various contagious diseases. The Youth Healthcare Team consists of: a physician, a nurse, a special education expert and a nutritionist/dietician.

Youth Dental Care Division
· Education and dental check-up among children

Contagious Diseases Department
Provides various services, such as:
· Vaccinations for travelers, high-risk groups.
· Tests and counseling regarding contagious diseases.
· Examinations "barmaids".
· Medical examinations for DIMAS.
· Health cards for food handlers.
· Prevention, registration and follow-up of contagious diseases.

Commodities Inspection and Hygiene Department
Provides services in the area of sanitary hygiene inspection regarding products, food safety and general hygiene, such as:
· Inspecting and taking samples at restaurants/take-aways/supermarkets.
· Inspecting the importation and exportation of food at the harbor/airport.
- During the opening of graves at the cemetery.
· Checking and taking samples of drinking water, water from the tanks, dams, subsoil, pools.
· In case of a spread of an infection caused by unhygienic food or situations.
· Supervising legislation in the area of food, burials, licenses for catering establishments ("cafeteria/restaurant license, beerhouse/restaurant license"), contagious diseases and quarantine.

Social Psychiatric Department
Provides services to outpatient clients with a chronic mental disease from the age of 18 and their families.
The services consist of:
· Guiding the client and his/her family during the process.
· Providing treatment aimed at the needs of the client of the Social Psychiatric Department.
· Offering support in emergency or crisis situations.

Veterinary Department
Provides services consisting of:
· Protecting the health of both human (consumer) and animals.
· Checking the importation of meat, meat products and live animals.
· The slaughtering of cattle and inspecting meat and meat products.
· Preventing, supervising and fighting against diseases among animals in the general interest.
· Inspecting the trade in animals falling under the Nature Conservation Ordinance.
· Veterinary care to animals in the rural areas.
· Investigating diseases among animals.

Yellow Fever and Mosquito Control
Its services consist of making the community aware of the risk of contagious diseases caused by the mosquito Aedes aegypti that carries the dengue fever, chikungunya and Zika fever viruses and helping the community to control and eliminate breeding grounds of mosquitoes that cause these diseases and other vector-borne diseases.
It does so by:
· Providing information to and educating the public.
· Inspecting houses, neighborhoods, mangroves, hotel areas and ponds for breeding grounds.
· Spraying insecticides in case of contagious diseases caused by mosquitoes.
· Investigating and monitoring the type and quantity of mosquitoes and breeding grounds in Aruba.

Health Promotion Department
Offers health programs aimed at a target group, to inform, educate and motivate in order to arrive at a behavioral change insofar as one's own health is concerned, as part of living a healthy life. The subject may be a risk factor or a condition that threatens people's health.