Moontown

Aabida Allaham

CARICOM Health Ministers are currently moving towards the creation of an agency in Trinidad and Tobago that seeks to ensure a disease-free environment for all.

At the opening of a two-day meeting of the bureau of Caricom Health Ministers to discuss and make evidence-based decisions in respect to its establishment at the Hyatt Regency hotel in Port of Spain on Thursday, Health Minister Jerry Narace said the decision to do so stems from the same desire to protect our people from health risk while effectively managing public health issues.

’Our focus in this meeting is the establishment of the Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA). Our vision for CARPHA is a Caribbean in which the health of the people is promoted and protected from disease, injury and disability, thereby fostering the wellness revolution enunciated in the Port of Spain declaration,’ he said.

CARPHA’s mission, according to the minister, will be to provide strategic direction, in analysing, defining and responding to public health priorities within Caricom in order to prevent disease, promote health and respond to public health emergencies.

’The mission also entails supporting solidarity in health, as one of the principal pillars of functional cooperation, in the Caribbean Community,’ he added.

The Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO) Caribbean programme coordinator Dr Bernadette Theodore-Gandi added that the need to create an agency like this was necessary, especially in light of the influenza A/H1N1 pandemic.

’There needs to be a combined effort for dealing with public health threats and hopefully this will be the answer for people throughout the Caribbean,’ she said.

Once approved, however, CARPHA will assume the governance and public health functions currently undertaken by five regional health institutions - the Caribbean Epidemiology Centre (Carec), the Caribbean Environment Health Institute (CEHI), the Caribbean Health Research Council (CHRC), the Caribbean Food and Nutrition Institute (CFNI), and the Caribbean Regional Drug Testing Laboratory (CRDTL).

’It is envisaged that, with the establishment of this new regional health agency, whose headquarters will be located in Trinidad, the region’s public health sector and programmes will be managed more efficiently, providing upgraded services to the entire Caricom and the rest of the world,’ Narace added.

But more than that, he said, since approximately half of the world’s countries have a tropical climate, they expect CARPHA to evolve into a Centre for Tropical Disease Control in the long run. (Trinidad Express)