CFNI to close as new regional body formed
Published:Sunday | August 5, 2012 | 12:00 AM
The Caribbean Food and Nutrition Institute (CFNI), headquartered on the Mona campus of the University of the West Indies (UWI), will close its doors this December due to its planned merger with other health agencies into one body.
Sources at the CFNI who requested anonymity said the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO), which has been administering the body on behalf of Caricom for many years, has handed back responsibility to regional governments.
The Caricom heads have voted for the creation of a single entity, the Caribbean Public Health Agency, or CAPHA, which will merge five agencies, including CFNI.
CAPHA will become the operating centre for Caricom's health and nutrition research centre.
Attempts to reach Dr Jerome Walcott, the interim head of the CFNI who works in Barbados, were not successful.
The entities to be merged are CFNI and the Caribbean Institute for Drug Testing in Jamaica, Caribbean Epidemiology in Trinidad, the Caribbean Environmental Institute in St Lucia, and the Caribbean Health Research Council in Trinidad.
"The reasons is that the amalgamated group is likely to function better," said one CFNI source.
Trinidad will be the new headquarters for CAPHA, which becomes operational in January 2013.
"There is a legal start, an official start, and an operational start. The five institutions will be decommissioned as of December. The CFNI will no longer exist and CAPHA will begin shortly after. Many of the governments have signed off, so legally it is already in operation. But, as of yet there is no executive team. These will be recruited later," the source said.
Staff reductions
The changes are the latest in a succession of staff reductions at CFNI which saw cuts from 213 at peak to 170 then to 130 over time within the Caribbean.
"It is unlikely that Jamaicans will be employed in Trinidad. The Caribbean Institute for Drug Testing will remain here so staff will not have to move. However, staff at the CFNI are currently seeking jobs," said the CFNI representative.
Started in 1967, CFNI and its sister agencies were run by PAHO.
The centre was created, its website notes, to forge a regional approach to solving the nutrition problems of the Caribbean, serving a total population of about six million, a third of who live in Jamaica.
PAHO, which is a regional arm of the World Health Organisation, is currently engaged in rationalising its own operations throughout the Caribbean.