Caribbean should invest heavily in proper health response systems says Jamaican Prime Minister

PHOTO CAPTION: Right to Left: Mr. Jaime Cabal, Deputy Secretary-General, UNWTO; Minister Edmund Bartlett, CD, MP, Minister of Tourism; Mr Andrew Holness, Prime Minister;  Juergen Steinmetz,CEO, eTurbo News News

Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness has cautioned the Caribbean region to not take lightly its absence from a major pandemic. 

According to Holness, the Government of Jamaica is spending significant resources to ensure the country is able to respond to, and prevent diseases and health threats from morphing into pandemics, which, he says on many occasions, have had major effects on travel across the world.

“The challenge with pandemics is not that people will get sick and won’t be able to function. The real challenge is that some people will hear there is something in this region; it doesn’t even have to be in this country, there is something in (one country) and the region is avoided,” the Prime Minister said.

“So, Jamaica’s strategy is not just to ensure that Jamaica is safe, but to collaborate with all countries through the PAHO, WHO, and to ensure that we play our part in strengthening the global network for a healthy region and a healthy world so that there is no need for anyone to avoid the region. This mean that we have to invest heavily in proper public health response systems and have proper protocols, quarantine and the like to ensure that no Pandemic happen in this region,” he added.

Mr Holness was speaking at the launch of the Global Tourism Resilience and Crisis Management Centre which was held at the Montego bay Convention Centre on Wednesday January 30.

The centre will be headquartered at the University of the West Indies, Mona Campus in Kingston, is aimed at enabling vulnerable states across the world to recover quickly from natural disasters through destination preparedness, management and recovery from disruptions with real time data and Communication.

Source: Claudia Gardner
Caribnewsroom Staff Writer

Access Jamaica is a production of Caribnewsroom