At the 13th annual lecture at San Fernando City Week, hosted by the Anthony Sabga Caribbean Awards for Excellence, Dr Dave Chadee lamented the lack of science underpinning efforts at controlling the spread and breeding of the aedes aegypti mosquito.Dr Chadee, professor of environmental health at the University of the West Indies, is renowned for his pioneering studies into the life cycle of the virus carrying bug.
On Wednesday, Minister of Health Dr Fuad Khan told Parliament that there were 164 confirmed cases of chikungunya, the debilitating virus spread by the mosquito with another 2,000 suspected cases on report.Dr Chadee fears that there could be between 5,000 and 10,000 cases of ChikV for the year because the methods being used to control the spread of mosquitoes are ineffective.
With over 1,000 cases of dengue for the year, another virus spread via the vector of mosquitoes, the country faces a high, though difficult task to tabulate cost in lost manpower and productivity that might have been better spent applying clear scientific principles to insect vector control.
Ground level fogging has proven to be ineffective and aerial spraying not only does not work, it damages the environment, killing pollinating agents like butterflies, bees and birds, causing needless damage to the country's ecosystem.At the core of the issue is understanding that mosquitoes need human blood to feed on and suitable breeding areas to thrive. How we respond to that reality will form the core of any sensible response to the threat these insects pose.
"We know where the mosquitoes feed, when they rest, how they behave, and for the first time we have a complete study on their behavior," Dr Chadee explained."Why then haven't we been able to control these insects? I am saddened that evidence does not influence policy."
It wouldn't be the first time that bureaucracies have been kept busy pursuing failed practices on the basis of historical processes and opinion, but the hungry mosquito population is governed by no such fantasies of effective action and continue to breed in the face of manifestly useless efforts to destroy them.Dr Chadee did not offer an action plan for insect vector control, but it's clear that he has many ideas that are crying out for implementation.
The entomologist spent four formative years in the field at the Ministry of Health's Insect Vector Control Division between 1979 and 2003 after taking his first degree, seeing first hand just how pointless our efforts at controlling the mosquito population are.
In the face of the punishment the population has weathered as a result of ineffective efforts at controlling the nation's mosquitoes, perhaps it's time to listen to the scientists who have industriously studied this pervasive insect and to press hard scientific fact into service in the fight to bring the aedes aegypti mosquito under better control.
ChikV and dengue are now endemic to T&T and need better management, but we must also remain on guard against a resurgence of malaria, which was largely expunged from the Caribbean by the 1970's but had a brief resurgence in Jamaica five years ago.We won't be getting rid of these viruses, but driving new efforts at mosquito control governed by scientific research is likely to ultimately prove to be our best response to their ready transmission.