| Sick Ship? CDC Can Tell You | |
Expecting a "Love Boat" experience, only to end up hugging nothing but the toilet, more than 1,000 people aboard several of America's top-rated cruise ships came down with a contagious stomach virus during the fall and winter of 2002. Fortunately the Centers for Disease Control can help consumers avoid spending thousands of dollars for a seagoing sickness.
CDC's Vessel Sanitation Program
Cruise ships are a perfect breeding ground for contagious diseases. Isolating
large groups of people from all parts of the U.S. together in the closed
environment of a ship at sea greatly increases the chances for person-to-person
spread of diseases like measles, rubella, certain respiratory illnesses and gastrointestinal
illnesses such as Norwalk-like virus.
After a series of major disease outbreaks on cruise ships during the 1970s, the CDC, in cooperation with the cruise ship industry, created the Vessel Sanitation Program (VSP). The program helps the cruise ship industry in developing and implementing sanitation programs and provides for regular inspections of ships.
Under the VSP program, every ship that has a foreign itinerary, stops at U.S. ports and carries 13 or more passengers must undergo two un-announced inspections each year. Ships are scored on a 100 point scale and must score 86 points or more to be certified. Ships that fail have between 30 to 45 days in which to be re-inspected.
Check the ship's 'Green Sheet' before booking
The CDC publishes a current VSP inspection report, known as the "Green
Sheet," for
Travelers can also look up a ship's sanitation inspection history by searching the CDC's Summary of Most Recent Inspections database located at: http://www2.cdc.gov/nceh/vsp/vspmain.asp.
The Green Sheet report is also available from more than 3,000 travel-related services around the world.
Since the inception of the Vessel Sanitation Program, CDC records indicate the number of disease outbreaks on ships has declined despite significant growth in the number of ships sailing and the number of passengers carried.
The Vessel Sanitation Program is just one of the many services of the CDC's Travelers' Health division.
