Sustainable funding needed to mobilise support
THERE is a prediction that within the next year or two, the region could be experiencing yet another strain of dengue fever.
It comes from Executive Director of the Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA), James Hospedales, who warned that should a major health hazard emerge, his organisation would not have an emergency fund on which to rely.
“If we had an introduction of Ebola or some other haemorrhagic fever, God forbid, I don’t have an emergency fund to mobilise with. I can’t send immediate support to member states so they can get going,” he lamented.
To this end, he stressed that in order to manage existing and emerging health threats, there must be sustainable funding.
His comments came during a panel discussion held at the Radisson Aquatica on Monday night under the theme, ‘Co-ordination Mechanisms in Latin America and the Caribbean for Natural Hazards and New Security Threats’.
“We had the threat of Ebola, this year we are facing the Zika epidemic, the consequences of which are still playing out and so it is 2016 and we can predict with some degree of certainty that next year, but more probably 2018 the region will have a Dengue Type 3 epidemic. Dengue has been increasing in frequency and severity for the last 30 or so years.
“The problem isn’t Chikungunya, Zika or Dengue. The problem is our comfort with the mosquito aedes aegypti and the multiplication of sites which it can breed. The fact that you can have a vector that can so effectively transmit diseases right across the population is a health security threat, a tourism threat and an economic threat.”
He noted that CARPHA, which was operationalised in 2013, operates over 15 different monitoring systems for diseases. Some require 24-hour, weekly and monthly monitoring.
The CARPHA head explained that even though there is good collabor-ation with Caribbean Airlines and LIAT for the transport of specimens, there is no formal agreement as it relates to transportation.
“When we get down to the detailed logistics, I am not satisfied I can get somebody to a country with a team to collect a specimen that no civilian can touch. I am going to need military airlift,” he told the regional representatives in attendance.
He told the panellists that he was informed by a head of a regional Air Team that the logistics and treaties are not in place as it relates to refuelling of aircraft and accommodation should a response team have to stay in another country overnight.
Hospedales reminded that even though there are approximately 17 million persons in the CARICOM region, there are an additional 23 million in Cuba, Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico.
Additionally, he revealed that 52 million persons visited the region last year, with 26 million cruise arrivals and an equal number of international travel arrivals.
“There were 236 cruise ships in the Caribbean last year and another 3.8 million of capitalisation coming on stream this year. If you think about disaster and diseases and security threats, that is one of the vulnerabilities in our region. The tourism industry – heaven help if something like that happens because that is our life blood for most of the region,” he stated.
He revealed that during the State of the Industry Conference, security threats and disease epidemics would be discussed by the industry officials. (JH)
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