Introduction:
The Brazilian Health Regulatory Agency supervises cruise ships and created the national health surveillance program for cruise ships in 2009 to promote transparency and dialogue with the industry. The action’s objective is to control sanitary risk and thus protect travelers, the environment and the population on land^1,2. The last Brazilian cruise season (10/04/23 to 30/04/2024) had 46 vessels, 46 ports and around 950 anchorages^2,3. There’s always an expectation of improvements in the vessels’ sanitation security compared to last seasons, especially in the pandemic period.

Methods:
The Program involves a vessels’ guide^1,4, an information system for risk management³, a national inspector’s team, that produce a risk classification of cruise ships. In the last season, 17 vessels were inspected according to standard scripts, which includes health surveillance items³. The Inspections record contain required items. When they aren’t implemented, especially “critical controls”, they impact negatively ships classification, which has 4 standards A, B, C or D.^2,3

Results:
Figure 1 shows a total of 85 requirements established in the risk manager system for each one of the 17 cruise ships, totaling 1649³. In general terms, 95% of these requirements were complied with. In absolute terms, the most deficient items were food, cleaning and hygiene and climatization^2,3. In relative terms, climatization and pest control. The items with the highest occurrence of “critical controls” were outbreak prevention and food. The scores corresponding to the requirements mentioned in figure 1 result in the vessels’ classification ^2,3.

Conclusions:
This program has been successful in creating safe vessels, protecting the health of the population. It is a guideline for the sector, with a positive impact on economic activity, as it adds value and validates the services offered. This classification influences the market, directing demand towards healthy ships³.