The Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA) will be hosting a chikungunya consultation in Trinidad and Tobago next week to look at the complex challenges the mosquito borne virus has brought to the region.
The conference entitled, Chikungunya and the Caribbean: Meeting Today’s Challenge and Preparing for the Future, will take place March 3-5, 2015.
The Consultation will provide a valuable platform for key Caribbean and international stakeholders to share experiences, review currently available knowledge and, develop and reinforce the multisector collaborative efforts required to tackle Chikungunya and other mosquito borne diseases.
The conference presents a unique opportunity to position vector borne diseases as a high priority agenda, and will include sessions on: Surveillance and Outbreak Response; Entomological Surveillance, Control and Management; Clinical Care; Laboratory Services; Communication Strategies and Experience; Long-term Impact of Chikungunya; and Research and Innovation.
The Caribbean region has been hit the hardest by the chikungunya epidemic, which first raised it’s ugly head as an issue of local transmission 14 months ago. Of the more than 1.2 million autochthonous cases reported in the Americas since Dec. 2013, the Caribbean has accounted for more than 825,000.
