New regulation stipulates travellers declare health status

Nov 27, 2019 News

A reporting regulation has been put in place which will require travellers to declare their health status to the authorities.
The regulation is part of a plan to monitor and improve the health and safety of travellers by the Guyana Tourism Authority (GTA), the Ministry of Public Health and the Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA).
Representatives of the organizations met in October to discuss methods on improving health and safety of locals and visitors, to heighten tourism resilience and reputation.
According to information publicized in the Official Gazette, the ‘Reporting on Disease Events among Guests at Tourism Accommodation Establishment’ regulation requires that the Chief Medical Officer (CMO) of the Ministry of Public Health is notified of any form, occurrence or detection of diseases.
The information on diseases should be forwarded via the tourism and health information system. Among other things, the regulation stipulates that a full internal enquiry must be conducted once a disease event is classified, the case must be addressed by a health provider or authority through the health notification process.
“Once the disease has been classified as an alert by the authorities, then a full internal enquiry must be done, and a report on the matter must be given to the CMO within 24 hours of the occurrence.”
That report must detail all the persons involved in the detection and contact with the victim, as well as the victim’s personal identification detail.
Further the regulation states that the CMO must ensure recommendations are made to deal with the situation, and updates are given to the relevant authorities on a regular basis.
The disease monitoring programme, which was launched in 2017, is about improving a country’s capacity to provide cost-effective, quality health, food safety, and environmental sanitation (HSE) solutions to the HSE threats impacting on sustainable tourism in the Caribbean. This would be executed through real time early alert and response monitoring system for tourism-based health issues, training and certification, HSE standards, and multi-sectoral regional and international partnerships.
Participating countries will now have an enhanced capacity to fight HSE threats.
This integrated multi-sectoral programme is the first Caribbean-wide and global effort of its kind, setting an international precedent for improving sustainable tourism. Stakeholders emphasized that there is no better time than now, as new threats to health and travel in the region emerge and in this era of real time, instant information flow, for creating mechanisms for monitoring and responding to tourism health and safety threats.
Chief Medical Officer of the Ministry of Public Health, Dr. Shamdeo Persaud, stated that, “The programme provides training for some hospitality workers, such as tour operators and facilities operators. They are going through some of the standards they need, in terms of health and safety – food safety standards, but we are also piloting a new initiative where we would be partnering with the association to allow for easy notification if any health issues arise among tourists.”
The CMO went on to say that in the past, foreigners who visited the country had only reported cases of illnesses to their health agencies, only after they would have exited the country. “Maybe weeks or months after, then we hear about it through the media. You know, that can have a devastating impact, especially if the country decides to impose travel restrictions or advisories,” he added.
Director of Surveillance, Disease Prevention and Control at CARPHA, Dr. Lisa Indar, related that, “We have something called a Caribbean Corporation in Health; it is a document that sets the health agenda. So for instance, what are the health burdens for the region, and then we implement by having specific programmes. So we have a health information unit, we would also have a disease surveillance unit.
For that we would work with each member state to know what their issues are and then we set a plan in action—these are two years’ plans of action where we work towards implementing.”
Indar emphasized that these health plans have to be aligned with global, national and regional practices.

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New regulation stipulates travellers declare health status

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