March 2017 | Business View Caribbean

106 107 The Caribbean Public Health Agency volved in emergency response to epidemics and disasters. Also, we’re the hub of the Caribbean Public Health Laboratory network that joins up the whole region and shares information about disease patterns.We do a lot of training and capacity building of people in public health in the countries of the Region. And we provide leadership in identifying and adapting solutions to problems that the Region faces. Some of our leadership includes things like creating a new Caribbean Regulatory System for pharmaceuti- cals, and a tourism and health program. Those are niche things that the Region needs that we are in a good position to provide as new, val- ue-added services.” BVM: Regarding epidemics, how did CARPHA respond to last year’s Zika outbreak? Dr. Hospedales: “CARPHA responded as we do with other public health threats by activating its emergency mechanisms and teams because we foresaw that this might happen.We scaled up our laboratory capacity to meet the expected surge in testing requests from the countries, since this was a new virus we had not met, before.We issued advice to the countries, and worked closely with PAHO/WHO.We partnered with the Caribbean Hotel and Tourism industry to host webinars with 400 hotels on vector control. We engaged the Conference of our CARICOM Heads of Governments and presented the kinds of policies that needed to be pursued concerning pub- lic education and for controlling the environment to reduce the breeding of mosquitoes.We tracked the epidemic fromcountry to countryas it spread,and monitored insecticide resistance–awhole fleet of measures to prevent and control this type of out- break.” BVM: Does the fact that 24 countries aremembers of CARPHAcause problems in coordination? Dr.Hospedales: “It’s a work in progress–how to orchestrate and get harmony from all these different parts, and there are good signs that that is happening.The synergy between epidemiology and environmental experts, between research and all the program areas are examples of that.The 24 Member States vary a lot in size and in level of economic development.And even some that are economically very advanced, because they’re so small, they lack capacity, so we play the role of helping themmeet some of that capacity.Within the 24, there are some natural groupings, like the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS), that has monetary union and a single economic space.The UK territories form another group- ing and we work with them and Public Health England.We have a long history of working cooperatively in health in the region called CCH–Caribbean Cooperation in Health. There