…CARPHA is now legal
(CARICOM Secretariat) THE CURTAIN came down on the 32nd Annual Meeting of the Conference of Heads of Government of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) in St Kitts and Nevis yesterday, with the Bureau of Heads agreeing that it was a focused meeting with positive outcomes.

CARICOM Chairman, the Honourable Denzil Douglas, told journalists at the closing ceremony and press conference that the Summit was “focused” and dealt decisively with key issues, including health, climate change, agriculture and transportation.

With regard to health, Dr Douglas, who has lead portfolio responsibility for Human Resource Development, Health and HIV/AIDS in the Quasi-cabinet of the CARICOM Conference of Heads of Government, announced that the new Caribbean Regional Public Health Agency (CARPHA) was now a legally established entity, following the ceremonial signing of the Inter-Governmental Agreement on Saturday.

He added that it was a fitting tribute to the Community that CARPHA had at last been realised during the Community’s observance of the 10th Anniversary of the Nassau Declaration, which prescribed the health of the region as the wealth of the region.

CARPHA was the third and final component of the 2001 Nassau Declaration to be realised – the other two being the Pan Caribbean Partnership against HIV and AIDS (PANCAP) and the Caribbean Cooperation in Health (CCH). This agency should improve the delivery of health care in the region by merging the core functions of the five regional health institutions – Caribbean Epidemiological Research Centre (CAREC); Caribbean Health Research Council (CHRC); Caribbean Food and Nutrition Institute (CFNI); Caribbean Environmental Health Institute (CEHI); and Caribbean Drug Testing Regional Laboratory (CDTRL).

The Prime Minister of St Kitts and Nevis pointed to the significant role of the Community in the impending United Nations high-level meeting on non-communicable diseases prevention and noted that this issue had been given priority attention as the region prepared its high-level delegation for that special session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGASS) in September.
One of the major issues that the Community wants to include on the agenda of the high-level meeting is the formulation of appropriate policies to address risk factors, such as tobacco, alcohol, diet and lack of physical exercise in an effort to promote healthy lifestyles among its peoples.

The Caribbean Community has been deemed the front-runner in the fight against chronic NCDs, since its first ever Summit in NCDs in 2007, and was largely instrumental in lobbying for the resolution that spawned this special meeting to address the pressing health problem of NCDs, which cause an average of over 70 percent of the deaths, globally.

On the issue of climate change, Chairman Douglas reported that this would be included on the agenda of the 2011 Summit of the Americas as a matter of priority, in light of the susceptibility of Small Island Developing States (SIDS) to this natural phenomenon. He also reported that the conference had reviewed the region’s capacity to respond to hurricanes and underscored the role of the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA) as facilitator, driver, coordinator and motivating force for the promotion and engineering of Comprehensive Disaster Management (CDM) in all participating states. He further pointed to the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility as the ‘reservoir’ of funds from which member states could draw, following a natural disaster. The CCRIF is a risk-pooling facility, owned, operated and registered in the Caribbean, for Caribbean governments. It is designed to limit the financial impact of catastrophic hurricanes and earthquakes to Caribbean governments by quickly providing short-term liquidity when a policy is triggered.

Agriculture and transportation were also mentioned as two priority issues on which the Community would focus, moving forward. Referring to the link between agriculture and transportation, Prime Minister Douglas underscored the importance of preserving food security in the region as well as the need to transport adequately, people and goods across the Community. Dr Douglas explained that decisions were made to engage and involve the private sector and the academic community in these two priority areas.