 The Environmental Health Division within the Ministry of Health, Wellness and Elderly Affairs, in collaboration with the Pan-American Health Organization PAHO, is undertaking a pothelve workshop focused on the strengthening of pothelve regulations. The workshop provided pothelve officers along with officers involved in border control with the opportunity to review the requirements of the new International Health Regulation IHR and to assess their roles at the ports of entry. Chief Environmental Health Officer Parker Ragnanan spoke on the need for participants to embrace this workshop and to gain knowledge on strategies to strengthen the pothelve regulations in St. Louisshire. The information is important, not very often are we able to meet with our partners and to discuss matters of common and mutual interests, not often do we get to share experiences and to learn a little bit about what each other is doing because we recognize that as part of port security, all our persons involved in border control must work together because we all have a common interest in terms of the national health and security of the country. Chief Medical Officer Dr Sharon Belmar George reminded the participants of the key role they play at the ports and the need for agencies to work together to strengthen surveillance at the ports. I really want to continue to encourage you in the team approach between the various agencies to ensure that whatever we're doing is synergistic and effective as well and very, very, very timely. So I'm really hoping that apart from just receiving training, you're able to learn what the other agencies are doing. You're able to see where the gaps are so that together we can work together to ensure we strengthen what we do at the ports which is extremely important at this time. Temporary Technical Advisor Pao Collin-Brown says this workshop grants the opportunity to identify the gaps as it relates to ports of entry and finding ways to address them. One of the other challenges is limited human resources from the Environmental Health Department. Currently there's a lot of resources as it applies to COVID at the points of entry. There's a lot of infrastructure but the environmental side of it obviously needs to be strengthened as far as numbers are concerned. So this would also give the stakeholders the opportunity to be aware of the issues that health is involved in and to support them in strengthening that capacity. The workshop focused on areas such as water safety guidelines, solid and liquid waste, vector control guidelines and transportation of human remains to need a few. Supporting from the Communications Unit of the Ministry of Health, Wellness and Elderly Affairs, I am Fina Neptune.