CARPHA Rep Dr. Lisa Indar Visits Bermuda
Caribbean Public Health Agency [CARPHA] Programme Manager for Regional Tourism and Health, Dr. Lisa Indar visited Bermuda this week. The purpose of the visit was to build capacity and provide technical assistance and expertise on the prevention and rapid response to communicable diseases, food safety and health and safety in tourism.
Dr Indar met with the Minister of Health, Seniors and Environment and the Minister of Tourism and Transport to discuss health and tourism collaborations gathering momentum in the Caribbean region. Workshops were conducted with Health Officers, the Epidemiology and Surveillance personnel and key stakeholders on the hotel and cruise ship sectors.
“Given the importance of tourism in Bermuda’s economic recovery and preparations underway for events such as the 2017 America’s Cup, this is an important collaboration to reduce the risk that a public health event might otherwise have.” Director of Health, David Kendell said.
“CARPHA is advocating increased collaboration between health and tourism sectors to jointly address the critical link between tourism and health,” the Ministry said.
“One way of achieving this objective would be to strengthen the existing national surveillance system through the addition of an early warning and response mechanisms for travel related illnesses, i.e. establishing the monitoring of illnesses among visitors in hotels and on cruise ships.
“CARPHA is also calling for the development of an integrated database for clinical, food water and tourism related illnesses and building capacity in food and environmental safety for food service establishments in Bermuda.
“Dr. Indar reiterated CARPHA’s August 2014 statement on Bermuda’s beach water quality which concluded that the sea/beach water quality results generated by the Department of Health are reliable and that the bathing beaches of Bermuda meet the US EPA requirements for safe recreational use.
The latest sea water sampling programme results can be viewed here
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