Rad­hi­ca De Sil­va

Se­nior Re­porter

rad­hi­ca­s­ookraj@gmail.com

Health in­spec­tors and lo­cal gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials are prepar­ing to roll out in­ten­si­fied spray­ing ef­forts af­ter the Min­istry of Health iden­ti­fied a clus­ter of malar­ia cas­es in South Trinidad. Malar­ia, a mos­qui­to-borne dis­ease caused by the Plas­mod­i­um par­a­site, is trans­mit­ted through the bite of in­fect­ed fe­male Anophe­les mos­qui­toes. While malar­ia is not en­dem­ic to T&T, the min­istry said cas­es are typ­i­cal­ly im­port­ed or in­tro­duced, with 153 record­ed be­tween 2015 and 2024, av­er­ag­ing 15 per year.

But speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, Siparia May­or Dood­nath Mayrhoo said he would arrange for an emer­gency meet­ing to­day to dis­cuss the is­sue. He called on the Min­istry of Health to re­veal more de­tails.

And chair­man of the Pe­nal/Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion Gow­tam Ma­haraj said he would arrange to spray all low-ly­ing ar­eas such as Wood­land, Bar­rack­pore, and Rock Road.

In a state­ment on Wednes­day, the min­istry con­firmed five cas­es as of April 2, 2025, in­clud­ing the pri­ma­ry source.

The state­ment said, “As of to­day, April 2, 2025, five cas­es have been con­firmed, in­clud­ing the pri­ma­ry source, which brings the to­tal num­ber of cas­es for 2025 to five, as there were no oth­er con­firmed cas­es for 2025.”

Guardian Me­dia sought to get more de­tails, but when con­tact­ed about the lo­ca­tion of the clus­ter, Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh said, “I don’t know.”

In the state­ment, the min­istry said the cas­es had been iden­ti­fied with­in a well-de­fined ge­o­graph­ic area.

In re­sponse, the In­sect Vec­tor Con­trol Di­vi­sion has un­der­tak­en sev­er­al mea­sures since de­tect­ing the first case on March 27, 2025.

“The homes of all iden­ti­fied cas­es, as well as those in at least a one-mile ra­dius, were sprayed via truck-mount­ed Ul­tra Low Vol­ume (ULV) to im­me­di­ate­ly kill the adult mos­qui­toes,” said the state­ment.

“Hand-held ther­mal fog­ging was con­duct­ed around the homes (this is con­duct­ed in ar­eas where ULV was not pos­si­ble). In­ter­nal resid­ual spray­ing (IRS) with a longer-last­ing in­sec­ti­cide ef­fect was con­duct­ed with­in homes (the ef­fect of which lasts ap­prox­i­mate­ly three months). Per­i­fo­cal in­spec­tion of homes was al­so con­duct­ed to iden­ti­fy po­ten­tial breed­ing sites of the Anophe­les species of mos­qui­toes.”

Pub­lic health screen­ing pro­to­cols, in­clud­ing con­tact trac­ing, have been car­ried out, the min­istry added.