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Last Updated: Feb 13, 2017 - 1:45:37 AM |
NASSAU, The Bahamas - The Bahamas is one of seven regional countries whose tourism and healthcare sectors and by extension, economies, are expected to will benefit from the introduction of the Regional Tourism Health Information, Monitoring and Response Systems (THRMS) Programme and its Pilot Programme.
Other participating countries include Barbados, Belize, Guyana, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago and the Turks and Caicos Islands.
The THRMS and its Pilot Programme are being funded by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) with technical support provided by the Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA). The Project’s cycle will run from 2016-2019.
The main objectives of the Programme are to build a healthier, safer, better quality and more environmental friendly tourism industry, which would lead to more sustainable tourism within the region;to reduce food-borne and other illnesses within the tourism sector;to implement food and environmental safety, training and certification and to provide timely alert of health, environmental and social events, to support health monitoring efforts and stimulate a rapid and coordinated response.
Other objectives include:to establish a credible and affordable regional certification and recognition system to improve health, safety and environmental quality in tourism and to promote a healthy workforce and reduce avoidable health costs to employers.
The Programme also aims to increase awareness and promote mutual understanding, partnership and collaboration at the national and regional levels between tourism, health and environment stakeholders to address tourism and health as a joint priority and to develop partnerships, networks, resource mobilisation and business strategies for sustainability of the tourism and health programmes.
Dr. Glen Beneby, Chief Medical Officer, Ministry of Health, said the need to broaden surveillance systems to incorporate the tourism/hotel industry stems from the recognition that the Caribbean is “the most tourism dependent region in the world”.
“Appreciating that while this dependency brings significant economic benefits, it also brings different health, social and environmental challenges including the possible international spread of disease,” Dr. Beneby said.
“This Project has relevance for The Bahamas, particularly when considering that the most common health event impacting hotels over the last decade is Legionnaire’s Disease and that the burden of food-borne illnesses remains with Salmonella being a major culprit.
“No doubt, the key benefit of this Project’s implementation will be to mitigate against costly outbreaks and other negative public health events occurring in the tourism industry that can damage our tourism product and cripple our industry. This mitigation is poised to yield healthier, stronger, more reputable and sustainable tourism product for both visitors and locals alike,” Dr. Beneby added.
CARPHA officials say the Programme will also promote greater mutual understanding, and collaboration at national and regional levels between tourism, health and environment and other stakeholders;strong public-private sector inter-sectoral partnerships at national and regional levels between tourism, health and environment stakeholders to support a coordinated approach to deal with health, safety and environmental incidents.
It will also promoteanincrease in the reputation, comparative advantage, resilience and sustainability of the Caribbean tourism industry and economies by enabling a safer, healthier, better quality and standards-based certified destination; result infewer, less costly outbreaks and related events in the tourism industryandstrengthened, human resource capacity and skills in health, food safety, and environmental managementand result inhealthier, more productive workforces and families, with lower health care costs
According to CARPHA, tourism remains the principle source for employment, foreign exchange, and economic growth in the Caribbean and has one of the highest developmental impacts.In 2013, tourism accounted for 46.8M stay-over and cruise ship arrivals, generating revenues of US$28.1B and contributing to 14 per cent of the GDP and 12.3 per cent of total employment in the Caribbean.
“However, the industry is vulnerable to health, safety and environmental challenges including ongoing and costly outbreaks of food and water-borne and other enteric illnesses in hotels and cruise-ships; increasing violence and crime, declining natural resources, environmental degradation and serious deficiencies in environmental sanitation and safety that pose serious threats to the sustainability of the Caribbean tourism industry, high obesity, heart disease, stroke, cancer and diabetes among the tourism workforce.”
These problems, they say, can be largely prevented through good systems of monitoring and response, training in food safety and environmental management and standards & certification.
“The costs of illness and diarrhoea illness - no matter how simple – can negatively impact a country’s GDP,” Dr. Beneby said during the opening session of an Advanced Food Safety Training and Certification Train-the-Trainers Workshop that opened in New Providence Tuesday.
“We can in no way underestimate the importance of a conference such as this as it underlines the importance of the surveillance protection of the country’s borders. It is some of the most simple interventions such as hand-washing and paying close attention to following protocols and standards that are so critical to all of us having the best outcomes in our tourism industry and public health where we find it an important intervention to make.
“It is strategic and important and will strengthen the public health product and will make all of us better and so wherever you find yourselves, whatever protocol or procedure you need to do, you ought to follow it to ensure that this work - which is being reviewed by CARPHA - has the best outcome,” Dr. Beneby told participants.
© Copyright 2016 by thebahamasweekly.com
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