Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh is urg­ing the pub­lic, par­tic­u­lar­ly peo­ple fre­quent­ing and liv­ing in forest­ed ar­eas to take the nec­es­sary pre­cau­tions to pro­tect them­selves against in­fec­tions from malar­ia.

In a voice note from the Min­istry of Health on Thurs­day, Deyals­ingh said there were five cas­es of malar­ia which were iden­ti­fied as be­ing from a "well-de­fined ge­o­graph­ic area in South Trinidad."

He added that these cas­es were dis­cov­ered on March 27 and vec­tor con­trol meth­ods were rolled out, not­ing screen­ing showed that all those af­fect­ed were dis­charged from the hos­pi­tal.

Deyals­ingh, how­ev­er, stressed that peo­ple who lived in or near forest­ed ar­eas or who vis­it­ed such lo­ca­tions for recre­ation or work should pro­tect them­selves from pos­si­bly con­tract­ing the ill­ness.

"For ex­am­ple hunters, en­vi­ron­men­tal­ists, farm­ers, mem­bers of the pro­tec­tive ser­vices who go in­to our forests, es­pe­cial­ly in south Trinidad where we have dis­cov­ered this clus­ter.

"We ad­vise them to use the ap­pro­pri­ate pre­cau­tions like wear­ing, long-sleeved, loose-fit­ting clothes.

"If you are liv­ing in and around those forest­ed ar­eas, please use a mos­qui­to net, whilst you are sleep­ing and you can al­so use the ap­pro­pri­ate in­sect re­pel­lants, va­por­is­ers et cetera."

Deyals­ingh said malar­ia was not en­dem­ic to Trinidad and To­ba­go with al­most all cas­es be­ing im­port­ed from abroad.

Malar­ia is a mos­qui­to-borne dis­ease caused by a par­a­site.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment head of the Hunters Search and Res­cue team Val­lence Ramb­harat said while he was not aware of any ill­ness­es among his vol­un­teers, he said the group would con­tin­ue to take every nec­es­sary pre­cau­tion dur­ing its du­ties.

The group, which con­sists of vol­un­teer hik­ers and hunters have as­sist­ed po­lice in find­ing miss­ing per­sons over the years, by form­ing search par­ties in forest­ed, re­mote lo­ca­tions in east­ern and south­ern Trinidad.

"We have no prob­lem fol­low­ing the guide­lines.

'We nor­mal­ly wear long-sleeved jer­seys and what we would add to our safe­ty gear is prob­a­bly gloves and we al­ways use some form of in­sect re­pel­lent, so we are hap­py they (the Min­istry of Health) is­sued the warn­ing so our mem­bers would be ad­e­quate­ly pro­tect­ed when we get out there."