Closure of the validation exercise of the quality criteria (prevention and treatment) carried out throughout COPOLAD II by the Caribbean countries concerned, presentation of results and plans for the future development of accreditation frameworks for quality assurance. This is the third meeting of Caribbean countries working on the adaptation and validation of quality and evidence-based criteria in drug demand reduction. Suriname hosts this new meeting, with the presence of seven countries of the Caribbean region, on 13 and 14 June in Paramaribo. Caribbean centers working on demand reduction have validated Minimum Quality Criteria in prevention and treatment. COPOLAD monitors this process, initiated in 2016, which after three years, shares the results of the piloting exercise.

Under the leadership of the National Drug Council (NDC) of Trinidad and Tobago, on this occasion, 25 participants from Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Dominica, Guyana, Jamaica, Saint Lucia, Trinidad and Tobago, together with the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) and the Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission (CICAD-OAS), who serve as advisors to the working group, under COPOLAD monitoring.

The experts of this working group, to which the indicated Caribbean countries belong, were invited to carry out a process of validation of the Minimum Quality Criteria in one of the fields of Demand Reduction: prevention or treatment, of the different Centers of the countries. In this sense, the main objective of this meeting will be to share the advances, findings and achievements that have been achieved during the validation / piloting exercise by the different member countries of the group, as well as to be able to evaluate possible future actions.