Caricom’s heads of government will hold a special meeting on the Ebola virus and chikungunya disease here on Tuesday, a release from the Office of the Prime Minister said yesterday. The release said the 17th Special Meeting of the Conference of Heads of Government of the Caricom will deal specifically with Ebola, which has ravaged West African countries, as well as the chikungunya disease, which is affecting people within the Caribbean Community.
The meeting will be hosted by Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar at the Diplomatic Centre, St Ann’s, from 4 pm. The release said the primary purpose of the meeting is to review action being taken regarding the current challenging public health issues facing the Caricom region, the Ebola and ChikV diseases, and to agree on a way forward.
It added that in early September, Persad-Bissessar had called for the special meeting of Caricom to discuss the public health issues. This call, the releases noted, was made even before the United Nations discussed Ebola at its 62nd General Assembly Meeting in New York in late September.
Dr Denzil Douglas, St Kitts and Nevis Prime Minister and Lead Head of Government for Human Resource Development, Health and HIV/AIDS, also called for discussions regarding these significant public health challenges, given the implications for the Caricom community. Expected to attend the meeting are Ministers of Foreign Affairs and Health in the region.
The release said Caricom heads will also seek to arrive at a consensus with regard to the Caricom candidate for the post of Commonwealth Secretary-General. Several Caribbean countries, including Jamaica, St Vincent, Grenada and T&T, have recently placed a travel ban on citizens from Ebola-stricken West African countries, including Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, and put measures in place to either screen or quarantine its own nationals who have travelled to those countries.