Local health department personnel in the Ministry of Health, in collaboration with the Caribbean Public Health Agency with headquarters in Trinidad, met at La Vue Conference Room on Monday, September 16th, for a three-day workshop on Water Safety Planning for Anguilla.
The workshop was facilitated by Ms. Shermaine Clauzel, Mr. Bradshaw Isaacs and Mr. Kareem Charlemagne of the Caribbean’s Environmental Health and Sustainable Development Department based in St. Lucia. The facilitators sought to sensitize the participants to the need for achieving pure, clean drinking water as an objective, thus benefiting the health of the general public. To this end, they emphasized the need for assessing hazards and mitigating risks of water-borne diseases.
According to Ms. Clauzel, Head of the Caribbean’s Environmental Health Department, the workshop brought together national stakeholders to have discussions on aspects of the water supply system that can be possibly compromised. She said: “The objective is to identify what the potential impacts of unsafe water would be and then plan around controlling those impacts. Ultimately, we are looking for vulnerabilities in the water supply system and establishing controls so that we can guarantee the safety of drinking water for the people of Anguilla.”
Asked about the duration of the workshop and what will be done with any findings as a result of the discussions, she answered: “In the first instance, we will be engaged for three days. We will be actually conducting the workshop for two days and on the third day we will be doing some field research to verify and validate the information we would have received.
Ms Shermaine Clauzel & Mr Bradshaw Isaacs
“Once we go back, the process continues. The programme does not stop. We will be in constant contact with our focal points on the ground here. We will be continually requiring information, analyzing data and putting it together in a format that we can then re-submit and have all the information on the local water system validated.”
Ms. Clauzel indicated that the result of this exercise is the ultimate formulation of a Water Safety Plan. “This plan will be designed as a living document,” she said. “Even within the document itself, there will be recommendations for how often the plan should be revised for continued optimum water safety for generations to come.”
According to Mr. Ambrell Richardson, the local Director of the Department of Health Protection, the water safety standards currently observed by the Water Department are based on WHO guidelines. It is expected that the workshop conducted by the Caribbean Public Health Agency, whose slogan is “preventing disease, promoting and protecting health”, would eventually provide a higher standard of water safety for Anguilla.
– Staff Reporter, James R. Harrigan
