Adrian Frater, News Editor

WESTERN BUREAU:

The health authorities in western Jamaica are warning locals to be wary of their involvement with visiting cricket fans during next year's ICC Cricket World Cup as some of them might have communicable diseases.

Speaking at a recent Sandals Montego Bay's quarterly staff awards function, Dr. Maung Aung, the acting head of the Western Regional Health Authority's HIV/STI programme, said some of the participating countries are currently battling the containment of various communicable diseases.

"We have 16 countries coming to Jamaica for the opening ceremony and some (diseases are endemic to them) such as malaria, yellow fever and measles, which we have long eradicated," said Dr. Aung. "Although we have surveillance methods, which we will activate, everyone needs to exercise caution."

Contagious diseases

In looking at some of the contagious diseases that are endemic to some of the participating countries, Dr. Aung said India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and other countries in the sub-continent are prone to malaria, while yellow fever is endemic to Kenya.

"We are not trying to scare anybody, we just want people to be careful," said Dr. Aung, in noting that in hosting the opening ceremony, Jamaica is the only country that will have all 16 competing teams, their families and supporters visiting at the same time.

While acknowledging that Jamaica already has a surveillance protocol in place to cover the various ports of entry, Dr. Aung said it remains of critical importance that locals are sensitised about the various health implications.

"We want to sensitise the hotels so that, should they see symptoms, should a visitor from a particular country get ill, they will recognise the need to report it to the health authorities immediately," said Dr. Aung. "We don't want anybody to hide anything from us. we want them to tell us so that we can investigate."