PAHO and CARPHA convene 10 Caribbean countries and territories to align respiratory virus surveillance in the region

Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, September 17, 2026 (PAHO) - Epidemiologists and laboratory specialists from 10 Caribbean countries and territories gathered this week in Port of Spain for the Caribbean SARI Surveillance Workshop 2026, a joint initiative of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) and the Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA) to strengthen the subregion's capacity to monitor and respond to severe acute respiratory infections (SARI).

Over several days, participants took part in technical presentations, country-level discussion, and hands-on exercises covering the full surveillance cycle - from sentinel site selection and specimen collection through epidemic threshold-setting, dashboard reporting, and multi-source risk assessment.

A shared approach to a shared vulnerability

Caribbean Small Island Developing States face distinct challenges in respiratory virus surveillance: small populations spread across multiple islands, limited laboratory sample volumes, and - in most participating countries - no National Influenza Centre of their own. The workshop was designed to help countries adopt a common, uniform approach to surveillance despite these constraints, so that data collected at the country level can also be interpreted and acted on at the subregional level. Dr. Rondy noted that a uniform surveillance approach - and the ability to share and pool data across borders - allows countries in the region to understand faster what is happening in their territory and to act accordingly.

"This will allow the different countries of this region to understand much faster what is going on in their territory, and take actions to prevent the circulation of respiratory viruses, prepare healthcare systems to manage surge capacity, and at the end, lower the morbidity and mortality related to respiratory viruses."
- Marc Rondy, Regional Advisor, Pandemic and Epidemic-Prone Disease Epidemiology, PAHO/WHO

Positioning the Caribbean for regional health security

Leah-Mari Richards, Chief of Caribbean Subregional Programme Coordination at PAHO/WHO, underscored the strategic importance of the collaboration between the Regional Office and CARICOM institutions, including CARPHA, in advancing regional health security. Ms. Richards linked the workshop's focus to lessons drawn from the COVID-19 pandemic, stressing the need for epidemiologists and laboratory technicians to remain alert, prepared, and consistent in the data they collect.

"Respiratory virus surveillance, as we all know, is an area of public health interest, especially following the COVID-19 pandemic. We want epidemiologists and laboratory technicians to be fully aware of the need to be alert, to be fully prepared, and to document the correct data points that will help them understand trend analysis and look for specific anomalies in data. As we work with CARICOM to better prepare the Caribbean region to face emerging threats now and in the future, we need to ensure that countries are fully prepared to analyze, to respond, and to protect the people in their specific countries."
- Leah-Mari Richards, Chief, Caribbean Subregional Programme Coordination, PAHO/WHO

Grounded in shared technical guidance

Training content was built around the PAHO Technical Guidance for Routine Surveillance of Respiratory Viruses in the Americas (2026) and the WHO Pandemic Influenza Severity Assessment (PISA) Guide, 2nd edition (2024), giving all participating countries and territories a common technical foundation for indicator selection, threshold-setting, and reporting.

Sessions paired short technical presentations with discussion anchored in participants' own national systems, followed by interactive exercises built around a shared scenario reflecting the realities most Caribbean countries face - dispersed geography, cold-chain constraints, and thresholds built on limited data histories. Outputs from these exercises are expected to inform the development of a Caribbean-specific annex to the PAHO technical guidance, extending the workshop's impact beyond the room.

Running alongside the workshop, a parallel four-day hands-on training took place at the CARPHA Medical Microbiology Laboratory, focused on influenza molecular diagnostics. Laboratory participants worked through the full diagnostic pathway, from manual and automated nucleic acid extraction to real-time RT-PCR assay setup on the QuantStudio Dx platform, building the skills to interpret amplification curves, Ct values, and assay controls, and to troubleshoot invalid or inhibited results. The training also introduced participants to non-influenza respiratory virus testing and gave them hands-on exposure to the advanced diagnostic platforms increasingly used across Caribbean public health laboratories, including automated extraction systems such as KingFisher and QIAcube and cartridge-based molecular testing platforms including FilmArray, MolBio, and GeneXpert. The training was designed so that participants would leave not just with technical proficiency, but with the ability to apply what they learned directly within their own laboratories - strengthening influenza diagnostic capacity and respiratory disease surveillance in their home countries long after the training concluded.

Overall, the workshop forms part of ongoing collaboration between PAHO's Caribbean Subregional Programme and CARPHA to strengthen the region's core capacities under the International Health Regulations (IHR) and to support early detection of respiratory and other emerging threats across CARICOM Member States.