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Contact:
Claudia Monlouis
Friday, May 06, 2005 - More technical support and international expertise
will be made available to the St. Lucia based Caribbean Environmental Health
Institute (CEHI) in the coming months. The institute forged a new relationship
with the United States based Centre for Disease Control (CDC).
The newly formed collaboration was formalised on April 28th, with a visit from
Associate Director of the Global Health Office of the Centre for Disease Control
Ms. Marilyn DiSirio who held discussions on the way forward with the Executive
Director of CEHI Mr. Vincent Sweeney.
According to Ms. DiSirio because staff training is high on CEHI‘s agenda, this
area presents itself as a likely place to start strengthening their ties.
“I think the first area that jumps out at me is really participating in some
joint -training ventures. CEHI does a great deal of training by bringing
together people in workshops and I’ve looked at what their major programmes are
and our goal has really been to unite health and environment; so we will be able
to show what the health effects are of poor environments or poor environmental
situations and to help correct them.”
According to Mr. Sweeney the Caribbean Environmental Health Institute has been
creating linkages with organisations worldwide to build a network that can
assist in several areas including accreditation of the laboratory services at
CEHI.
“We cannot cover area all the areas our member states would want, therefore we
need to work with others and we have been doing this for a number of years and
the CDC Is essentially the latest we’ve added to the list of our collaborators.”
Additionally, Mr. Sweeney says, CEHI will also seek to create a possible
partnership with the CDC on a special project to implement alternative
strategies to reduce mercury use in products in the Caribbean Community.
CEHI’s, at present, addresses a wide a range of regional concerns including
Waste management, pesticide Management, and Integrated Management of Watersheds
and Coastal Areas.
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