A to­tal of 148 per­sons from key tourism en­ti­ties and stake­hold­ers in Trinidad have been giv­en ad­di­tion­al train­ing as part of over­all ca­pac­i­ty build­ing ini­tia­tives to en­sure a health­i­er and safer Car­ni­val 2025.

Ac­cord­ing to a re­lease from the Caribbean Pub­lic Health Agency (CARPHA), the tourism spe­cial­ists par­tic­i­pat­ed in CARPHA’s “Pre­ven­tion and Con­trol of In­fec­tious Dis­eases dur­ing Mass Gath­er­ings” train­ing on Feb­ru­ary 18, 2025, in prepa­ra­tion for Car­ni­val 2025.

CARPHA says the par­tic­i­pants were from tourism and hos­pi­tal­i­ty sec­tors, in­clud­ing ac­com­mo­da­tions, food and bev­er­ages, trans­porta­tion providers, tour guides, tour op­er­a­tors and or­gan­i­sa­tions as­so­ci­at­ed with events such as pro­mot­ers and mas bands.

The train­ing was fa­cil­i­tat­ed un­der CARPHA’s Re­gion­al Tourism and Health Pro­gram (THP), and is part of its on­go­ing col­lab­o­rate with Tourism Trinidad Lim­it­ed (TTL) to build ca­pac­i­ty to pro­mote health­i­er, safer tourism as Trinidad pre­pares for its an­nu­al Car­ni­val mass gath­er­ing event 2025.

“This tar­get­ed train­ing pro­vid­ed Trinidad tourism stake­hold­ers with the knowl­edge, ca­pac­i­ty and prac­ti­cal ex­am­ples of pre­ven­tion and con­trol mea­sures of in­fec­tious dis­eases in the Caribbean re­gion dur­ing mass gath­er­ing events, such as Car­ni­val 2025,” CARPHA said.

The Agency notes that T&T Car­ni­val ex­pects a high num­ber of tourists from many coun­tries who will be in-coun­try to ex­pe­ri­ence the cel­e­bra­tions. It says it has been work­ing with TTL “to pro­tect the health and well-be­ing of both vis­i­tors and the lo­cal pop­u­la­tions, es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing the Car­ni­val sea­son.”

“Dur­ing mass gath­er­ing events, there is the in­creased like­li­hood that in­fec­tious dis­eases can spread faster as large num­bers of per­sons are in close con­tact,” CARPHA ex­plains. “The re­gion­al Tourism and Health pro­gram (THP) aims to strength­en ca­pac­i­ty among tourism stake­hold­ers to bet­ter man­age and re­spond to any pub­lic health threats.”

Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor at CARPHA, Dr Lisa In­dar, un­der­scored the im­por­tance of build­ing ca­pac­i­ty among tourism en­ti­ties to re­duce ill­ness­es and pub­lic health threats.

“Car­ni­val at­tracts a high num­ber of tourists which can per­haps con­tribute to the spread of new and re-emerg­ing in­fec­tious dis­eases. Tourism stake­hold­ers will be equipped with the knowl­edge of how to pre­vent and op­er­ate safe­ly dur­ing mas gath­er­ing events, re­duc­ing the risk and oc­cur­rences of vac­cine-pre­ventable dis­eases, vec­tor-borne dis­eases, res­pi­ra­to­ry dis­eases, food and wa­ter-borne dis­eases and sex­u­al­ly trans­mit­ted dis­eases,” she stat­ed.

TTL’s In­ter­im Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer, Cor­nell Buck­radee, not­ed that CARPHA’s ca­pac­i­ty build­ing ini­tia­tives work to keep the re­gion safe.

“We thank CARPHA for recog­nis­ing the pub­lic health threats and for tak­ing proac­tive mea­sures to pre­vent and con­trol them,” he said. “We look for­ward to a con­tin­ued suc­cess­ful col­lab­o­ra­tion with CARPHA to en­sure tourism stake­hold­ers are pre­pared to op­er­ate with an in­creased lev­el of aware­ness, lead­ing to im­proved lev­els of health and safe­ty with­in their plan­ning and op­er­a­tions.”

TTL has worked close­ly with CARPHA since the THP’s in­cep­tion in Trinidad launch­ing the pro­gramme on Sep­tem­ber 23, 2016. Since then, 193 fa­cil­i­ties in Trinidad have reg­is­tered on the Tourism and Health In­for­ma­tion Sys­tem (THiS); 1503 per­sons trained in pre­ven­tion and con­trol of in­fec­tious dis­eases; 37 per­sons trained and cer­ti­fied in Ad­vanced Food Safe­ty Train­ing; and 53 fa­cil­i­ties re­ceived the Health­i­er Safer Tourism Award.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Trinidad was a host coun­try dur­ing the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup, and in col­lab­o­ra­tion with both the Min­istry of Health and TTL, re­ceived spe­cialised ca­pac­i­ty build­ing ses­sions in man­ag­ing in­fec­tious dis­eases dur­ing mass gath­er­ings; Food and En­vi­ron­men­tal Safe­ty train­ing for food han­dlers; and mass gath­er­ing sur­veil­lance (78, 97 and 31 per­sons trained re­spec­tive­ly).