Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, 23 May  2023.  The Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA) signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) to work together in preventing disease, promoting and protecting public health. This agreement builds on a long-term collaboration to improve regional health security across the Caribbean, enhancing disease surveillance and better protecting people from health threats.   More than one third of the visitors to the Caribbean are from the United Kingdom. The UK Overseas Territories (UKOTs) of Anguilla, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, and Montserrat are also CARPHA Member States.

Dr. Joy St. John, Executive Director of CARPHA, said “I welcome this agreement with UKHSA because CARPHA is committed to maintaining our relationship for the long-term, in order to address a range of public health issues towards improving health and saving lives.” Professor Neil Squires, Director of Global Operations, UKHSA added “I am very pleased to sign this agreement with CARPHA as we further develop an equal partnership of shared learning, focused on common challenges to protect people’s health.”

The MoU includes commitments to define strategies for combatting  infectious disease threats, noncommunicable diseases, strengthening outbreak response, building laboratory and workforce capacity and improving healthy safer tourism, given the highly  tourism dependant economies of UK Overseas Territories in the Region. There is specific emphasis on genomic surveillance of high priority pathogens which emerged as a new service during the COVID-19 pandemic. There are also plans of building  more capacity to deal with antimicrobial resistance and  lessons learned will be shared across field epidemiology and laboratory training programmes at CARPHA and UKHSA.

The UKHSA visited CARPHA’s Headquarters and met with CARPHA’s technical team in April 2022 and March 2023 to identify and  expand on the  areas of collaboration for  improving  health security.  Dr. Natalie Wright and Professor Squires met with CARPHA’s Executive Management team in April 2023 in the margins of the 67^th Annual Health Research Conference to advance discussions.  The UKHSA supported  CARPHA with secondments in communicable disease surveillance and field epidemiology training programmes from January to March 2023.

Further information

The Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA) is headquartered in Trinidad and Tobago and acts as the single regional public health agency for the Caribbean. It was legally established in July 2011 by an Inter-Governmental Agreement signed by Caribbean Community Member States and began operation in January 2013. The Agency partners with Member States and stakeholders to prevent disease, promote and protect the health of the people of the Caribbean.

The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA)  is an executive agency of the UK Department of Health and Social Care, established in 2021 with a permanent secretariat in London, United Kingdom. It supports global health through world-leading science, research, knowledge and intelligence, advocacy, partnerships and specialist services.