RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh says there are 303 con­firmed dengue cas­es na­tion­al­ly with coun­ty Ca­roni ex­pe­ri­enc­ing the high­est in­crease.

His com­ments come as Tabaquite MP Ani­ta Haynes-Al­leyne com­plained that dengue cas­es had risen sharply in her elec­toral re­gion.

Ap­peal­ing to the cen­tral Gov­ern­ment for im­me­di­ate help to tack­le the grow­ing pub­lic health cri­sis in her con­stituen­cy, Haynes-Al­leyne said, “The mos­qui­to prob­lem has sky­rock­et­ed, and it’s wor­ry­ing, es­pe­cial­ly so ear­ly in the rainy sea­son.”

She added: “My of­fice and the lo­cal re­gion­al coun­cil are flood­ed with re­quests for mos­qui­to spray­ing, and we’re hear­ing about more and more cas­es of dengue af­fect­ing fam­i­lies and neigh­bour­hoods.”

She said Tabaquite seems to be one of the hard­est-hit ar­eas.

De­spite ef­forts by the Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion to spray for mos­qui­toes, Haynes-Al­leyne said there were chal­lenges due to lim­it­ed re­sources from the cen­tral Gov­ern­ment.

“We on­ly have one fog­ging ma­chine for a large area like Ca­roni Dis­trict. We ur­gent­ly need more equip­ment, man­pow­er, and bet­ter da­ta sup­port from the Gov­ern­ment to ef­fec­tive­ly fight this out­break,” she added.

She stressed the need for the Min­istry of Health to pro­vide time­ly da­ta and en­hance sup­port at lo­cal health cen­tres where many peo­ple are turn­ing up sick.

Crit­i­cal­ly ill pa­tients have been ward­ed at the Point Fortin Hos­pi­tal and the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

Haynes-Al­leyne al­so called on the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port to quick­ly re­spond to re­quests for clear­ing over­grown ar­eas prone to mos­qui­to breed­ing.

“De­lays in ba­sic main­te­nance have left us vul­ner­a­ble,” she added, ex­press­ing frus­tra­tion with bu­reau­crat­ic hur­dles.

Say­ing this “out­break” could have been pre­vent­ed with proac­tive mea­sures, Haynes-Al­leyne urged the Gov­ern­ment to im­ple­ment com­pre­hen­sive strate­gies to pre­vent a fur­ther spread of dengue in Tabaquite and oth­er ar­eas.