KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Com­ing off a dead­ly year of dengue fever out­breaks, Min­is­ter of Health Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe has as­sured the pub­lic that all chem­i­cals, equip­ment and ma­chin­ery re­quired for mos­qui­to erad­i­ca­tion are avail­able.

Speak­ing at the Min­istry of Health’s Mos­qui­to Aware­ness Week cam­paign at Gulf City Mall, La Ro­main, Bo­doe iden­ti­fied pub­lic aware­ness as the biggest chal­lenge in curb­ing the spread of dengue. Ear­li­er this week, he and Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Health, Dr Rishad Seecha­ran, toured the In­sect Vec­tor Con­trol Di­vi­sion to as­sess readi­ness. While ac­knowl­edg­ing that the sys­tem is not per­fect, Bo­doe said steps will be tak­en to ad­dress ex­ist­ing is­sues.

Re­call­ing the 19 con­firmed dengue-re­lat­ed deaths in 2024—in­clud­ing the case of an eight-year-old girl who was dis­charged from a health cen­tre with­out med­ica­tion—Bo­doe stressed that doc­tors at these fa­cil­i­ties are the first point of care. He said they are trained to recog­nise symp­toms and are tak­ing ad­di­tion­al pre­cau­tions.

“We are pre­pared. We are hop­ing it would not be as bad as last year, but we are not tak­ing any chances; we are tak­ing all pre­cau­tions this year,” Bo­doe said.

“Our pol­i­cy is that it is bet­ter to be safe than sor­ry in cas­es like that. And of course, we al­so want to urge those who may be ex­pe­ri­enc­ing symp­toms of dengue to seek med­ical at­ten­tion at the ear­li­est as pos­si­ble. I think that is very im­por­tant.”

Asked why 2024 saw such a sharp in­crease in cas­es, Bo­doe ex­plained that dengue tends to oc­cur in cy­cles, and 2024 hap­pened to be a par­tic­u­lar­ly bad year. He al­so point­ed to shift­ing weath­er pat­terns, which have cre­at­ed favourable con­di­tions for mos­qui­to breed­ing.

Spe­cial­ist Med­ical Of­fi­cer at the In­sect Vec­tor Con­trol Di­vi­sion, Dr Os­afo Fras­er, not­ed that the surge in dengue cas­es was part of a glob­al trend linked to chang­ing weath­er pat­terns, in­clud­ing long pe­ri­ods of drought fol­lowed by in­tense rain­fall. He said South Trinidad ex­pe­ri­enced a high con­cen­tra­tion of mos­qui­toes, though mon­i­tor­ing is on­go­ing na­tion­wide along­side pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion ef­forts.

In re­sponse to the out­break, the Gov­ern­ment in 2024 im­ple­ment­ed stricter en­force­ment un­der the Yel­low Fever Reg­u­la­tions. Pub­lic health in­spec­tors were au­tho­rised to is­sue fines of $3,500 or im­pose up to six months’ im­pris­on­ment on prop­er­ty own­ers whose premis­es har­boured mos­qui­to breed­ing sites.

Asked whether this en­force­ment pol­i­cy will con­tin­ue, Bo­doe said lo­cal gov­ern­ment bod­ies hold the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for its ex­e­cu­tion. How­ev­er, he ex­pressed hope that it will not come to the point where cit­i­zens must be charged for fail­ing to main­tain their homes. The Min­istry is in­stead fo­cus­ing on a ro­bust pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion cam­paign.

Re­gard­ing spray­ing and drain main­te­nance, Bo­doe said there will be a col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­fort be­tween the Min­istry of Health and lo­cal gov­ern­ment bod­ies. Prepa­ra­tions be­gan ear­li­er this year in an­tic­i­pa­tion of a po­ten­tial out­break.

Cou­va Hos­pi­tal as­sess­ment to reach Prime Min­is­ter

Turn­ing at­ten­tion to health in­fra­struc­ture, Bo­doe said he re­cent­ly toured the Cou­va Hos­pi­tal and found the vis­it in­for­ma­tive. He is cur­rent­ly await­ing a com­pre­hen­sive re­port and a GAP analy­sis on what is re­quired to make the hos­pi­tal ful­ly op­er­a­tional. While un­able to pro­vide a start date, he said the re­port should be on his desk by Mon­day be­fore be­ing sub­mit­ted to Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

“Our pre­lim­i­nary find­ings were that there were 20 pa­tients, I be­lieve, in a 230-bed hos­pi­tal. I think that is far from sat­is­fac­to­ry. There was al­so the is­sue of non-func­tion­al CT scan and MRI ma­chines, but I am await­ing a full re­port which will be hand­ed over to the Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter, in terms of how we go for­ward with the hos­pi­tal.”

Bo­doe al­so con­firmed he has re­ceived a pre­lim­i­nary re­port re­gard­ing an in­fant who suf­fered a bro­ken arm at Mt Hope Hos­pi­tal in April.