Madam Chair,
Dr. Claudette Harry;

Dr. The Honourable Hamza Rafeeq,
Minister of Health;

Sir George Alleyne,
Director of the Pan American Health Organization;

Dr. Jeffrey Koplan
Director of the United States Centre for Disease Control;

National Epidemiologists and Laboratory Directors of the Caribbean;

Members of the United Nations Family;

Excellencies of the Diplomatic Corps;

Distinguished Guests;

Ladies and Gentlemen;

It is a double pleasure for me to be with you today.

Today we celebrate the Silver Jubilee of the Caribbean Epidemiology Centre.

Today we lay the Foundation Stone for a new CAREC facility.

Did I say it was a Double Pleasure for me to be here with you today?

Let me make that a Triple Pleasure.

This event provides public opportunity for me to welcome and salute Sir George Alleyne, the first Caribbean-born-Director of the Pan American Health Organization.

As Sir George Alleyne is the first son of the Caribbean soil to lead PAHO, Dr. James Hospedales is the first Caribbean-born Director of CAREC.

We must also salute Dr. Hospedales.

For good measure, ladies and gentlemen, this occasion is a Triple-Medal event, with the presence amongst us of the first ever Caribbean Man to be elected President of the World Health Organization.

Shortly after CAREC was established, 25 years ago, the then Minister of Health of Trinidad and Tobago, in 1978, wrote an indelible page in history when he was elected President of World Health Organization.

Excellency, the Honourable Kamaludin Mohammed, it is good that you are here today to join in celebrating CAREC's Silver Jubilee and to be witness to the ceremonial inauguration of work on the Centre's new facility.

Triple pioneers in the husbandry of the health of the region, the Hemisphere, and the world.

We salute Sir George;

We salute Dr. Hospedales;

We salute Ambassador Mohammed.

Let me now welcome all visitors from abroad to the Rainbow Republic of Trinidad and Tobago.

Your presence underlines the significance of this event in the ongoing mission of my Government, and indeed the Govermnents of our sister Caribbean rations and territories, to make our region more healthy, and by extension, to make our people happier and more productive.

Are we succeeding in that mission?

Has CAREC succeeded in its mission?

A measure of our success is that the Caribbean has distinguished itself as being the first region of the world to have eliminated Measles and Poliomyelitis.

We now face another scourge, the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

I raised this concern at the CARICOM Summit in St. Kitts and Nevis, earlier this year.

I was therefore very pleased that a Caribbean conference on HIV/AIDS was held in Barbados a few weeks ago.

The Government of Trinidad and Tobago is giving the highest priority to the issue of HIV/AIDS prevention.

We continue to lose lives to HIV/AIDS at an increasingly alarming rate.

This is the reality in the Caribbean, as an increasingly alarming rate.

This is the reality in the Caribbean, as it is in the rest of the world.

HIV/AIDS is not the problem of any one nation.

It is a problem confronting the world.

There is thus justifiable concern at the response of significant stakeholders to this horrendous, this apocalyptic global problem.

In this context, ladies and gentlemen, the President of South Africa has been forthright in condemnation of the producers of drugs for treating AIDS victims for their failure to intervene in the acute AIDS pandemic in the developing world.

President Mbeki rightly asserts that such producers should intervene by reducing the costs of such drugs to developing countries where the HIV/AIDS is decimating the population, most particularly among young.

It is an incontrovertible fact that good corporate consciousness and conscience, can lead to productive partnerships between the suppliers of pharmaceuticals, the state and the citizenry, with significant resultant reduction in the prices of medication.

That is precisely what has happened with Trinidad and Tobago's Private Pharmacies Programme.

This partnership between the Government and the pharmaceuticals sector has substantially reduced the price of medication to persons with such problems as Glaucoma; Diabetes; Cardio Vascular Diseases; Asthma and Arthritis.

The prices of a range of products for the treatment of such ailments have been reduced by up to 60 per cent!

This programme may well be extended to a regional programme, ladies and gentlemen.

With several countries combining purchases, we can achieve a critical mass in buying power that should bring pharmaceuticals suppliers to the table.

Surely, there is bound to be a wide enough spread between the manufacturing costs of HIV/AIDS related drugs and the selling price to enable some amclioration of the economic problems faced by AIDS victims, so many of whom are from our low income groups.

CAREC has been notably successful in forging a productive partnership with the region's tourism sector.

In partnership with member countries and the Caribbean Hotel Association, CAREC has developed the Caribbean Tourism Health and Resource Conservation Project.

This project is being funded by the Inter American Development Bank and by the Caribbean Development Bank.

The objective of the Caribbean Tourism, Health and Resource Conservation Project is to improve the quality and competitiveness of the Caribbean Tourism to the mainstay of most of the region's economies.

It is quite notable that CAREC has succeeded in forging this alliance with the Caribbean Hotel Association and its associated organization, Caribbean Association for Sustainable Tourism.

Much credit for this alliance goes, I imagine, to Dr. James Hospedales.

In times past, Dr. Hospedales has been an untiring, and in some quarters, an unwelcome crusader, for his efforts to persuade the Caribbean Tourism industry to treat urgently with health concerns, such as food borne infections.

Tourism insiders have it to say that whenever Dr. Hospedales was about to enter the room to press the case for health standards in the tourism industry, the collective response from assembled tourism planners and promoters would have suggested the The Grim Reaper was about to come through the door.

Never to be deterred, the good Doctor persevered.

Today the region's tourism promoters and resort operators recognise that it is very valuable to have the Doctor from CAREC in the house.

CAREC, in another alliance, this time with funding from the European Union, will shortly establish a Medical Laboratory Strengthening Project in 15 Caribbean States, and a Substance Abuse Surveillance Project.

CAREC's Special Programme on Sexually Transmitted Infections is also the result of collaboration with a number of donor partners.

Were it not for the support of its donor partners, the health safety net that CAREC provides to the Caribbean people would have been hopelessly inadequate.

Now that we have entered the 21^st Century, we all recognize that new technologies, especially information technology, must be the tools we use to transform our societies.

A similar onus is obviously placed on CAREC.

CAREC, if it is to sustain its critical role in Caribbean Societies, has to rapidly transform to virtually revolutionize its systems and related infrastructure.

This is where the new CAREC facility comes in.

With the support of the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research and the United States Department of Defence Health Facilities Planning Agency, CAREC has designed a modern, state of the art facility.

This facility is estimated to cost US$18 Million.

I am please to confirm that the Government of Trinidad and Tobago will provide some funding, albeit nominal, towards the design of the new CAREC facility.

The new facility will include the National Public Health Laboratory, which is located in this same campus.

Together with our sister Caribbean Governments, our regional private sector partners, and our international domestic partners, the Government of Trinidad and Tobago is committed to the strengthening of CAREC as the heart of the public health infrastructure in the region.

As we signal the start of this new chapter in the life of this most vital institution, let me say a special world of thanks to the Pan American Health Organization, which administers the centre on behalf of our Governments.

We must also remember and recognize CAREC's many other international partners over the years.

Among them, I pay special tribute to:

Among regional partners, BWIA and LIAT are deserving of a special tribute for facilitating CAREC over the years, particularly with the speedy transport of samples.

We must also recognise the sterling performance of Dr. Hospedales and his staff, and that of their predecessors who paved the way for the culture of excellence, which CAREC personifies today.

In the same vein, I would like to pay tribute to my illustrious predecessor, the founding Father of the nation of Trinidad and Tobago, Dr. Eric Williams, for the initiative which led to the establishment of the institution.

I pay similar tribute to Ambassador Mohammed, whose competent and caring hands assisted in the birth of CAREC, 25 years ago.

With CAREC as a prime catalyst, the region has achieved significant advances in disease prevention and in health development, over the years.

Those advances, however, are now threatened by such new challenges as Dengue Haemorrhagic, HIV/AIDS, the re-emergence of Tuberculosis and the possible entry of the West Nile Virus.

We are also faced with life-style related concerns such as Heart Disease; Diabetes; and Cancer; and with the social pathologies of cancer and violence, particularly against women.

All of this means that we need CAREC, now more than ever.

I submit that it is the obligation of regional Governments to support the leadership of CAREC by increasing the priority we place on allocations for health services in our national budgets and in our national development perspectives.

In this context, the Government of Trinidad and Tobago, has implemented an ambitious comprehensive health sector reform programme.

As relatively well placed as Trinidad and Tobago might be, we are not content with our country's current position in the top third in overall health system attainment among the nations of the world.

The World Health Organization ranks Trinidad and Tobago ahead of more than 130 other countries in overall health system attainment.

I would like to see our country in the top Quintile among the close to 200 countries evaluated by WHO in health system attainment.

To this end, we continue to invest in infrastructural development and in human resource development.

We have dramatically upgraded and expanded our health facilities.

We have established new modern facilities.

We are training record numbers of nurses and doctors, and other medical personnel.

We have also been providing training in Public Health Engineering and Sector Control.

We have begun to make use of the hitherto underutilised facilities at the Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex.

We have doubled the pharmaceuticals budget since 1995.

We have introduced a Joint-Replacement programme.

Renal Transplants are now being done.

Free Pediatric Open Heart Surgery is now giving scores of children a new least on life, if not new lives.

Shortly after my appointment as Prime Minister, I had to travel to the United Kingdom for a coronary angiogram.

Since then we have introduced Coronary Angiograms and we have accelerated the programme for Adult Open Heart Surgery.

New Technologies are making a decisive difference in our national health system.

We have also provided for enhanced compensation packages for health sector personnel.

We will shortly inaugurate the pilot project for a National Health Insurance Programme.

Through the National Health Insurance Programme, we will be better able to provide quality health care to every citizen at any health institution, and with any practitioner, of the citizens choice.

This will bring us closer to the delivery of what we regard as an essential human right, timely quality health care for every citizen.

Indeed it is my intention that what we are doing in universal free secondary education, we shall achieve in the national health system.

No one shall be left out.

No one shall left behind.

While we remain committed to private sector participation in health care delivery, my Government continues to be decidedly interventionist in the area of health services

I see this as the Government's responsibility, primarily.

Caribbean Governments, I reiterate, owe it to CAREC to provide a regional network of efficient, effective and adequate national health systems.

For its part, CAREC has reached out to internationally celebrated institutions in order to equip itself to further and better serve the peoples of the Caribbean.

As it gears up for its second twenty five years, we must all pledge to renew our support for CAREC.

I pledge that renewed support on behalf of the Government of Trinidad and Tobago.

Were it not to be a matter of tempting the Gods, I would say, in conclusion, that I look forward to being with you all for the celebration of CAREC's Golden Jubilee in 2025.

May God spare many of your lives to that day.

Caribbean Epidemiology Centre
16-18 Jamaica Boulevard, Federation Park
P.O. Box 164, Port of Spain
Republic of Trinidad and Tobago
Tel: (868) 622-4261, Fax: (868) 622-2792
E-mail: postmaster@carec.paho.org

Page last modified 23 November, 2000