The Ministry of Tourism is preparing for any negative impact to the country’s vital tourism industry that could result from the discovery that 12 persons on Exuma have tested positive for malaria.
According to Director General of Tourism Vernice Walkine, efforts are already underway to gauge any potential fallout.
“Obviously we have a crisis management plan that kicks in when this kind of thing occurs,” Ms. Walkine said while speaking with the Bahama Journal from New York last night.
“We have already started to do our due diligence and we are monitoring the airwaves to see what kind of pickup we get on the story.”
The director general, who is in New York attending the Caribbean Tourism Organisationﾒs Caribbean Week, said a significant number of media personnel are also attending the week of activities.
She said depending upon whether members of the press put many questions to her about the number of malaria cases found in The Bahamas and based also on the type of questions asked she would be better able to determine what the Ministryﾒs next step should be.
Ms. Walkine said she is satisfied, however, that at present there is not cause for undue alarm.
“From the Ministry of Tourismﾒs perspective we have to defer to the experts in terms of ensuring that the measures that they have indicated are put in place to contain the situation are held in place for the foreseeable future until everybody is satisfied that there are no more new cases that are occurring and that the situation is in fact contained to the specific areas identified by [Minister of Health Dr. Nottage],” she said.
“Iﾒm sure that queries will begin to come in and we will address them as appropriately as we can based on the information available to us. But I donﾒt think there is cause for panic or anything of that kind.”
Speaking at a news conference Tuesday afternoon, Dr. Nottage said the likelihood of malaria spreading from Exuma throughout The Bahamas is “relatively low”.
By: Darrin Culmer, The Bahama Journal
