RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Alarmed by re­ports of the coun­try's first dengue death for the year and 126 con­firmed cas­es, res­i­dents of Wood­land and sur­round­ing ar­eas are ap­peal­ing for In­sect Vec­tor Con­trol to spray their com­mu­ni­ties

The iden­ti­ty of the dengue vic­tim has not been made pub­lic and Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh is ap­peal­ing to cit­i­zens to re­spect the fam­i­ly’s pri­va­cy. How­ev­er, he said spray­ing isn’t the on­ly an­swer to erad­i­cat­ing the mos­qui­to-borne dis­ease.

“When you over­spray any ar­eas the mos­qui­toes build up re­sis­tance and hu­man and an­i­mal health are af­fect­ed be­cause you are ex­posed to spray­ing too of­ten,” he said.

The min­is­ter rec­om­mend­ed that house­hold­ers ex­er­cise per­son­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty by re­mov­ing saucers, vas­es and clogged gut­ter­ing where the mos­qui­toes can breed. He said wa­ter tanks should be prop­er­ly cov­ered.

“These mos­qui­toes breed in your own home and you have to get rid of all breed­ing sites. One flow­er­pot with wa­ter can hold 1,000 eggs,” Deyals­ingh said.

Res­i­dents of Wood­land said they are con­cerned about a pos­si­ble out­break be­cause there are clogged drains in the area where the mos­qui­toes could thrive.

Kevin Hard­ua said there have been more than a dozen cas­es in the area of Pluck Road but no at­tempts have been made to spray for mos­qui­toes.

“We are con­cerned about this be­cause we have been ask­ing the In­sect Vec­tor Con­trol to spray. The rains are here and it is fill­ing up the la­goons with wa­ter. The mos­qui­toes are get­ting re­al­ly bad now be­cause there are too many ar­eas where wa­ter set­tles,” he said.

Pres­i­dent of the South Oropouche River­ine Flood Ac­tion Group Ed­ward Mood­ie said the threat of dengue is re­al.

“The salt­wa­ter in­tru­sion de­stroyed most of the preda­tors which would have de­stroyed the mos­qui­toes so right now the mos­qui­toes are breed­ing at a phe­nom­e­nal rate. We are ask­ing the Min­istry to bring in ad­di­tion­al teams to spray these com­mu­ni­ties. Let us have a sched­ule of spray­ing to deal with this be­cause if we don’t more peo­ple will die,” Mood­ie said.

Siparia May­or Dood­nath Mayrhoo said there are plans to spray the af­fect­ed ar­eas and he has been as­sured by the Min­istry of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment and Rur­al De­vel­op­ment that wa­ter­cours­es and drains will be cleared.

Mayrhoo said he has pre­pared a com­pre­hen­sive es­ti­mate on the af­fect­ed ar­eas that will be sub­mit­ted to the Min­istry for ap­proval and the Pub­lic Health De­part­ment and the med­ical doc­tor at the Siparia Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion will hold an emer­gency meet­ing to deal with the out­break.

The Min­istry of Health is col­lab­o­rat­ing with re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al stake­hold­ers to im­ple­ment best prac­tices in the pub­lic health sec­tor.

“Cur­rent­ly, the 126 dengue cas­es are be­ing ef­fec­tive­ly man­aged and re­main with­in a con­trolled phase,” the Min­istry said in a re­lease.