Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

The Min­istry of Health is brac­ing for more dengue cas­es as the num­ber of con­firmed in­fec­tions con­tin­ues to trend up­ward.

Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh not­ed that de­spite ef­forts by au­thor­i­ties to keep dengue at bay, the num­bers are ris­ing.

Deyals­ingh said while there were no new deaths be­tween last week Fri­day and yes­ter­day, peo­ple di­ag­nosed with dengue fever in­creased from 712 to 813 dur­ing that pe­ri­od.

“What I am see­ing is a re­peat of the COVID-19 ex­pe­ri­ence where peo­ple just took too long to come in to be treat­ed, to be di­ag­nosed, and to be screened,” he added.

Deyals­ingh com­ment­ed dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing at the Min­istry of Health yes­ter­day. Al­so at­tend­ing the brief­ing were Act­ing ER­HA Med­ical di­rec­tor Dr Dar­ren Dookeer­am, Pae­di­atric Emer­gency Spe­cial­ist Dr Joanne Paul, act­ing Con­sul­tant Haema­tol­o­gist Dr Kavi­ta Ram­lochan, Med­ical Chief of Staff NCRHA Dr Ravi Lal­la and act­ing Prin­ci­pal Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Maryam Ab­dool-Richards.

The min­istry con­tin­ues to mount a ro­bust na­tion­al re­sponse, Deyals­ingh said. “The Min­istry of Health con­tin­ues to mount a ro­bust na­tion­al re­sponse to dengue, we are prepar­ing for an in­crease in cas­es. That is why we have ac­ti­vat­ed the Cou­va fa­cil­i­ty. I urge peo­ple to make use of the fa­cil­i­ty. We have in­tro­duced sim­i­lar lines of treat­ment at the oth­er RHA’s.”

The min­is­ter urged cit­i­zens to make use of the na­tion­wide ear­ly screen­ing cen­tres.

Deyals­ingh was al­so crit­i­cal of the lack of steps be­ing tak­en by cit­i­zens to con­trol the Aedes ae­gyp­ti mos­qui­to, the main vec­tor that trans­mits dengue fever.

“The cit­i­zen­ry has not stepped up to the plate. The ma­jor re­sponse agency is the home own­er and home own­ers are not step­ping up to the plate to rid their yards and homes of these small to medi­um-sized con­tain­ers, for ex­am­ple, buck­ets, un­used dog bowls, wa­ter dish­es, plant saucers, and clean­ing gut­ter­ing. They have not stepped up to the plate.”

He said de­spite the con­cerns raised about dengue, he was left dis­ap­point­ed to see the lack of mea­sures tak­en by cit­i­zens and not­ed the ob­ser­va­tions made dur­ing his dai­ly com­mute to work.

“On the walkover, you have six plants plant­ed to dec­o­rate the place, and you know what they plant­ed it in, tyres, so how does the Gov­ern­ment re­spond to that? Af­ter you cross the walkover on the left-hand side there is a three-tiered wa­ter fea­ture, and I am sure there is clear stag­nant wa­ter in that, and that is in a com­mu­ni­ty, and when you dri­ve through a com­mu­ni­ty as I do, you see all these fea­tures that col­lect wa­ter.

“The Gov­ern­ment can­not go and emp­ty every sin­gle wa­ter con­tain­er. Ac­cord­ing to him, in the space of less than a month, the num­ber of home­own­ers is­sued with no­tices to clean up their premis­es rose from 30 to 441.

“The pop­u­la­tion, in my view, still haven’t played their part in rid­ding their homes and yards of breed­ing sites, and that is why we have to is­sue 441 no­tices, but I am sure that that is a drop in the buck­et. The pop­u­la­tion needs to do much more.”

Guardian Me­dia sent a ques­tion to the min­istry’s cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions de­part­ment to find out how many peo­ple were fined af­ter fail­ing to un­der­take the nec­es­sary ac­tions. How­ev­er, no re­sponse was pro­vid­ed up to late yes­ter­day.

The min­is­ter fur­ther stressed the role of cit­i­zens in com­bat­ing the virus.

“The ex­pect­ed cas­es that we are an­tic­i­pat­ing and prepar­ing for we can make a dent in that and al­so en­sure that not many more peo­ple suc­cumb to this virus. We don’t want a re­peat of what we saw in 2014, where, at that time, some­where be­tween 14 and 20 per­sons died, we are cur­rent­ly at eight.”

Deyals­ingh, who al­so con­firmed that of­fi­cials from the In­sect Vec­tor Con­trol Di­vi­sion had so far con­duct­ed over 160,000 home vis­its, main­tained that mos­qui­to spray­ing and de­fog­ging ex­er­cis­es were be­ing con­duct­ed strate­gi­cal­ly but were not the so­lu­tion to curb­ing the spread of dengue.

“If you over­spray, two things re­sult, one, the mos­qui­toes build up re­sis­tance, and when you spray in the fu­ture it will have no ef­fect on the mos­qui­toes. Over­spray­ing is dan­ger­ous to hu­man health, an­i­mal health, wildlife, fish par­rots, bees, and every­thing like that, so spray­ing is done as part of an in­te­grat­ed man­age­ment plan, so yes, we are spray­ing, but we are not blan­ket­ing the whole of Trinidad and To­ba­go in a fog of malathion.”