Strengthening Consumer Safety in the Americas: A Unified Approach for Health and Protection

1. ICPHSO - Seoul 2011 “There’s a new kid in town”

2. ICPHSO - Seoul 2011 America’s Consumer Safety and Health Network – CSHN www.oas.org/rcss

3. Three Americas: • Regional Diversity, • Different National Capacities Needs: • Consumer safety is a social determinant of health. • Effective protection of consumer health and safety is a challenge among different authorities: Industry, Consumer Protection and Health Authorities. • Trade and consumption are global, therefore, it requires regional cooperation, efforts of integration, even global initiatives. • There is a need to strengthen market surveillance capacity of the countries of the region

4. What we wanted: From April to August 2010: Meetings with consumer protection agencies, health agencies and associations of consumer protection to evaluate needs of the region from which they set: • the objectives, • features, • components and strategies of the CSHN

5. Commitment: To contribute: • a guarantee of safe consumption of goods and services and • the protection of consumer health in the Continent, • by strengthening the capacity of the Member States for monitoring and controlling product safety

6. CPSC-HC RAPEX CSHN

7. November 23, 2010: Official launch of CSHN during the OAS Permanent Council meeting by Brazil and United States health and consumer protection authorities

8. The Americas’ Consumer Safety and Health Network - CSHN Based on two main principles: • Development and homogeneity of administrative and regulatory actions in the Americas • Unified inter-communication system to warn of hazardous products.

9. Steps taken so far: • Creation of a Technical Advisory Group. • Establishment of early warning site: • pool of warnings issued around the world to raise awareness and train. • Opportunity to exchange information and experiences • Development of a postgraduate course of training for staff involved in network management • Study the requirements and identify the characteristics of rapid communication system to respond to intra-state and international needs. • RAPEX model • Creating partnership with CARICOM to start pilot warning system with the Caribbean

10. Current and Future Steps: Roadmap • Continue training. • The general course • The specific – specialization course. • Develop a joint action agreement protocol • Prepare manuals to be followed by all network components. • Construct an injury data base • Determine and implement the tool that will meet our needs - Expansion of Rapid Alert Interamerican System (SIARA) • Cooperation and support of global initiatives OECD - USA - EU - ... ...

11. Implementation schedule: Two levels: • National • Continental Various speeds, but they all follow the agreed roadmap according to: • Political agenda • Financial and personnel capacity • Speed of legislative change

12. If the market is global, the government action responsible for the safety of products must be global Thankyou Josep Tous jtous@ieconsumo.org