The Health Min­istry has again found it­self plead­ing to the pub­lic to take health con­cerns se­ri­ous­ly, this time call­ing for more at­ten­tion to the cir­cum­stances that may lead to the rise in dengue cas­es.

In do­ing so, it has pre­sent­ed fig­ures show­ing a rise in in­fec­tions, with over 100 new cas­es be­tween Fri­day and Tues­day and eight deaths for the year so far. From man­ag­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, the min­istry knows just how dif­fi­cult it can be to get the buy-in from cit­i­zens on health is­sues, even when they be­come mat­ters of life and death.

Back then, the flood of dis­in­for­ma­tion as­so­ci­at­ed with the vac­cines made the min­istry's ef­forts a night­mare. Con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries, thank­ful­ly, have hard­ly found them­selves con­nect­ed to dengue fever warn­ings.

Com­pla­cen­cy, how­ev­er, is where the prob­lem lies, as iden­ti­fied by Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh at a news con­fer­ence yes­ter­day. For the most part, he urged cit­i­zens to come for­ward quick­ly to be test­ed for dengue fever. From his per­spec­tive, the slow pace al­ready re­flects what tran­spired dur­ing the COVID-19 pe­ri­od, so he ad­vised that the min­istry would make the Cou­va fa­cil­i­ty, which was used for COVID-19 treat­ments, avail­able for dengue test­ing as well. While Min­is­ter Deyals­ingh's ur­gency is valid, his min­istry must al­so fo­cus on the rea­sons why cit­i­zens are some­times re­luc­tant to seek help at pub­lic fa­cil­i­ties, large­ly due to the long de­lays in be­ing at­tend­ed to. In­ef­fi­cien­cies in the health sec­tor can prove just as dead­ly.

Af­ter the death of Rakesh Nan­lal from dengue last week, con­cerns were raised about the ef­fec­tive­ness of the health sec­tor in speed­i­ly ad­dress­ing the dengue prob­lem.

Phar­ma­cy Board pres­i­dent An­drew Ra­haman not­ed that in Nan­lal's case, blood tests at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex were de­layed. He ar­gued that had Nan­lal re­ceived the re­sults ear­li­er, he might have stood a bet­ter chance of sur­vival. It stands to rea­son that get­ting more peo­ple to act swifter can be bet­ter achieved by rais­ing the pop­u­la­tion's con­fi­dence in pub­lic health fa­cil­i­ties with re­gard to quick­er at­ten­tion and speed­i­er turnover of re­sults.

These chal­lenges aside, the mes­sage must still re­sound loud­ly: that we all stand a bet­ter chance of beat­ing dengue fever by seek­ing ear­ly treat­ment than by do­ing so too late, a mes­sage that Ra­haman al­so echoed af­ter rais­ing his con­cerns over the death of Nan­lal. Min­is­ter Deyals­ingh is right.

We ought not to take chances with our health or ex­pect that the Gov­ern­ment alone must bear the full re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the dengue fight. As point­ed out yes­ter­day, each cit­i­zen has a role to play in tend­ing to the breed­ing grounds for the Aedes ae­gyp­ti mos­qui­toes that spread the dead­ly virus. The call to step up ef­forts to rid their premis­es of con­tain­ers, buck­ets, bowls and saucers that col­lect wa­ter is just about the least that can be ex­pect­ed from re­spon­si­ble cit­i­zens.

The min­istry has al­ready is­sued 441 no­tices to home­own­ers to clean up their premis­es, which is need­ed even more now as the rainy sea­son is ex­pect­ed to be busier than usu­al. There is no mes­sage more im­por­tant than one that can save one's life. Re­gard­less of what­ev­er chal­lenges the min­istry faces in get­ting the mes­sage of dengue pre­ven­tion and ear­ly treat­ment heard and ac­cept­ed, it must re­main vig­i­lant in its ef­forts to do so.