Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

The Op­po­si­tion is call­ing on Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh to de­clare dengue a pub­lic health emer­gency. Re­fer­ring to con­fir­ma­tion from the min­istry on Sat­ur­day that there were cas­es of the mos­qui­to-borne virus, Ca­roni East MP Rishad Seecha­ran made the call while ad­dress­ing the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) week­ly press brief­ing, yes­ter­day morn­ing.

Seecha­ran likened Deyals­ingh’s han­dling of the virus to the Gov­ern­ment’s ini­tial re­luc­tance to make the de­c­la­ra­tion in re­la­tion to the COVID-19 virus in 2020. He said, “To­day, as I speak to you, dengue is be­com­ing the COVID-19 of 2024.”

Seecha­ran not­ed that the cas­es con­firmed by the min­istry thus far were not an ac­cu­rate re­flec­tion of the na­tion­al in­fec­tion rate, as the sta­tis­tics are based on cas­es con­firmed through lab­o­ra­to­ry test­ing. “Many thou­sands more are left un­di­ag­nosed, with mild to mod­er­ate symp­toms,” he said. There have been two dengue-re­lat­ed deaths and 190 con­firmed cas­es of dengue fever as of June.

Seecha­ran point­ed out that Puer­to Ri­co made the de­c­la­ra­tion af­ter it not­ed more cas­es in the last five months than for the whole of last year.

Deal­ing with the min­istry’s at­tempts to deal with the virus, Seecha­ran point­ed out that it is­sued a pub­lic ad­vi­so­ry on its so­cial me­dia pages on Fri­day. The ad­vi­so­ry list­ed the con­tact in­for­ma­tion for Coun­ty Pub­lic Health Of­fices across the coun­try for cit­i­zens to re­port sus­pect­ed cas­es and pos­si­ble breed­ing sites for the Aedes ae­gyp­ti mos­qui­to, which trans­mits the virus.

“This is too late. This should have been done many, many months ago. The min­istry has tak­en too long to ac­ti­vate its pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion cam­paign,” Seecha­ran said.

He al­so crit­i­cised the min­istry for fo­cus­ing its cam­paign in shop­ping malls, as he not­ed that 83 per cent of the cas­es iden­ti­fied by the min­istry came from rur­al com­mu­ni­ties in cen­tral and south Trinidad.

“The Min­istry of Health had the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to go in­to rur­al and vul­ner­a­ble com­mu­ni­ties and to tar­get their mes­sage to those who need it the most,” he said.

Seecha­ran al­so took aim at the min­istry’s In­sect Vec­tor Con­trol Di­vi­sion, whose work, he claimed, was ham­pered by a lack of equip­ment, chem­i­cals, and per­son­al pro­tec­tive equip­ment. He claimed that the Pe­nal/Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, the Cou­va/Tabaquite Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, and the Siparia Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion, which are all con­trolled by the UNC, have tak­en mat­ters in­to their own hands and have be­gun ag­gres­sive spray­ing and fog­ging cam­paigns in com­mu­ni­ties with clus­ters of in­fec­tions.

“Pe­nal/Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion chair­man Gow­tam Ma­haraj has al­so tak­en the ini­tia­tive of in­sti­tut­ing an ad­di­tion­al morn­ing shift of spray­ing, achiev­ing 1,000 house­holds per day through­out the cor­po­ra­tion and with its re­sources,” he said.

Ma­haraj told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that the re­gion was grap­pling with swarms of mos­qui­toes. He said there have been sev­er­al cas­es of dengue, and two re­lat­ed deaths in the Pe­nal/Debe re­gion.

Seecha­ran called on Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Faris Al-Rawi to en­sure the three cor­po­ra­tions re­ceive their fi­nan­cial re­leas­es on time so that the pro­grammes could con­tin­ue over the next few months. “Now is not the time to play pol­i­tics with the lives of peo­ple,” he said.

“Cor­po­ra­tions need all the as­sis­tance that they can get to keep our com­mu­ni­ties safe.”

Seecha­ran sug­gest­ed that Deyals­ingh reach out to the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (PA­HO) for tech­ni­cal as­sis­tance.

“They have the ex­per­tise to ad­vise where the min­istry has gone wrong in their dengue man­age­ment,” he said.

He ad­vised cit­i­zens to be vig­i­lant in recog­nis­ing whether they or mem­bers of their house­hold are suf­fer­ing from symp­toms of dengue, such as se­vere headaches, pain be­hind the eyes, nau­sea, joint and mus­cle pain, and swollen glands. He sug­gest­ed that they could low­er their risk of in­fec­tion by wear­ing cloth­ing cov­er­ing as much of their bod­ies as pos­si­ble, us­ing mos­qui­to nets when sleep­ing dur­ing the day, and us­ing mos­qui­to re­pel­lents and coils.

The Ca­roni East MP al­so ad­vised cit­i­zens to pre­vent mos­qui­toes from ac­cess­ing egg-lay­ing habi­tats by dis­pos­ing of wa­ter-col­lect­ing ves­sels on their prop­er­ties and by cov­er­ing, emp­ty­ing, and clean­ing do­mes­tic wa­ter stor­age con­tain­ers week­ly.

Mean­while, as Dengue Fever, Zi­ka and Chikun­gun­ya con­tin­ue to in­crease across the Caribbean re­gion, the Caribbean Pub­lic Health Agency has ap­pealed to peo­ple to re­main vig­i­lant and take im­me­di­ate ac­tion to re­duce the spread of these mos­qui­to-borne dis­eases as they threat­en lives and neg­a­tive­ly im­pact liveli­hoods.

Deyals­ingh’s re­sponse last month

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions in Par­lia­ment last month, Deyals­ingh de­nied al­le­ga­tions from the Op­po­si­tion that there were “hun­dreds” of dengue cas­es in T&T. At the time, Deyals­ingh said that the min­istry had record­ed 123 cas­es for the first five months of the year. Deal­ing with the min­istry’s prepa­ra­tions, he said every year it starts its dengue and mos­qui­to sen­si­ti­sa­tion pro­gramme in Feb­ru­ary.

He said the min­istry con­duct­ed sen­si­ti­sa­tion ac­tiv­i­ties with doc­tors to help them recog­nise signs and symp­toms. He al­so not­ed that there were pub­lic out­reach ex­er­cis­es. Deyals­ingh said the min­istry was fo­cused on ed­u­cat­ing the pop­u­la­tion on source re­duc­tion in the home and the com­mu­ni­ty through the clean­ing of wa­ter re­cep­ta­cles.

“We al­so do dif­fer­ent types of spray­ing, ul­tra-low-vol­ume ther­mal fog­ging. How­ev­er, spray­ing is not the on­ly so­lu­tion to this be­cause, as the Chief Pub­lic Health In­spec­tor ex­plained to the coun­try yes­ter­day, spray­ing can even­tu­al­ly lead to over-spray­ing, which caus­es the mos­qui­to to build up re­sis­tance to the chem­i­cals,” Deyals­ingh said.

“Al­so, it can be dan­ger­ous to hu­man, an­i­mal, bird health if ex­posed too of­ten. So the strat­e­gy is you do a com­bi­na­tion of sen­si­ti­sa­tion for home­own­ers to do their bit; (then) for the Min­istry of Health to do their bit via the In­sect Vec­tor Con­trol Di­vi­sion.”