On No­vem­ber 9 the Caribbean Pub­lic Health Agency (CARPHA) con­firmed five cas­es of Zi­ka virus in a ter­ri­to­ry of the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty. Ear­li­er this year, sus­pect­ed cas­es of the mos­qui­to-borne dis­ease were re­port­ed in Brazil and the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic.

Zi­ka is a vi­ral dis­ease, trans­mit­ted by the Aedes ae­gyp­ti mos­qui­to, which is al­so the in­sect vec­tor for Dengue and Chikun­gun­ya. The symp­toms are al­so very sim­i­lar to these dis­eases and in­clude fever, mus­cle and joint pain, headache, nau­sea, and rash. There is no vac­cine or treat­ment for Zi­ka and symp­toms last ap­prox­i­mate­ly four to sev­en days. Com­pli­ca­tions are rare and no deaths due to Zi­ka have ever been record­ed.

This is the first time Zi­ka has been de­tect­ed in a ter­ri­to­ry of the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com). Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor, CARPHA, Dr C James Hospedales em­pha­sised that pre­ven­tion and con­trol are fun­da­men­tal in or­der to pre­vent trans­mis­sion of the virus. He said "The best way to pro­tect your­self from this dis­ease is to avoid mos­qui­to bites and to pre­vent mos­qui­toes breed­ing in and around your home en­vi­ron­ment."

In this re­gard, CARPHA is urg­ing the pub­lic to in­spect their homes and yards week­ly, and elim­i­nate po­ten­tial mos­qui­to breed­ing sites in­doors and out­doors by keep­ing wa­ter drums and bar­rels tight­ly cov­ered, and throw­ing out stag­nant wa­ter from flower vas­es, old tyres, and oth­er con­tain­ers that might act as breed­ing sites.

Hospedales re­vealed that CARPHA will launch a mo­bile game called Zap-a-'quito, to as­sist in ed­u­cat­ing the pub­lic, par­tic­u­lar­ly chil­dren, on the Aedes ae­gyp­ti mos­qui­to and its po­ten­tial breed­ing sites, at a vec­tor-borne dis­eases work­shop, which will host­ed by CARPHA next month.