PHILIPSBURG (DCOMM):--- Two staff members of the Collective Prevention Services (CPS), a department in the Ministry of Public Health, Social Development and Labor (Ministry VSA), Nurse Nirmala Vlaun and Lionel Francisca, recently attended the Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA) workshop, “Operationalizing an Integrated Vector-Borne Disease Early Warning System,” where they got hands-on training.
Participants came from eight CARPHA member states, bringing together public health experts and national representatives to strengthen the Caribbean’s capacity to predict, detect, and respond to vector-borne disease (VBD) threats.
The primary focus is on strengthening surveillance of VBDs such as dengue, chikungunya, and Zika by improving the completeness, accuracy, and timeliness of national surveillance data. This ensures consistent, timely responses to outbreaks across the Caribbean.
The objective of the workshop is to strengthen national and regional capacity for operationalizing an integrated Vector-Borne Disease Early Warning System (VBD EWS) by improving data quality and validation process, establishing a foundational Standard Operating Procedure (SOP), and governance frameworks.
The objective is also to apply standardized risk assessment tools to support timely verification and response. This workshop was the first to bridge the gap between health officers/epidemiologists and environmental health officers who share their experiences and challenges.
Attendees worked together and focused on identifying national workflows and high-priority SOP needed by designing a framework using flowchart tools.
Attendees also had the opportunity to access current data tools, which highlighted the need to focus on core concepts, anomaly detection, data cleaning, and imputation.
The consensus is that challenges and gaps were all common throughout the Caribbean islands, which were the lack of capacity, human resources, tools, innovation, and training.
The workshop was hosted by CARPHA under the umbrella of the Pandemic Funds Grant. CARPHA is the Executing Agency for the grant, with the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) serving as the Implementing Entity.
The broader CARPHA Pandemic Fund Project supports efforts to reduce the public health impact of pandemics in the Caribbean by strengthening early warning systems, laboratory networks, workforce capacity and regional coordination.
The workshop took place last week in Barbados. A follow-up workshop is planned for November.
