T&T is gen­er­al­ly a place that re­acts on­ly when prob­lems ex­ac­er­bate to cri­sis pro­por­tions. Are we be­ing told the truth about the on­go­ing dengue "cri­sis" that has been con­tin­u­al­ly plagu­ing this na­tion or has it been rel­e­gat­ed to the back burn­er in the face of the state of emer­gency? The Prime Min­is­ter, her grand­son, as well as the leader of the Con­gress of the Peo­ple's daugh­ter are three promi­nent re­cent vic­tims of the dead­ly dis­ease. And re­cent­ly a sev­en-year-old from the San Fer­nan­do TML school lost her life to the dread­ed mos­qui­to bite. There are me­dia re­ports that cas­es are crop­ping up all over the coun­try, yet the Min­istry of Health con­tin­ues to spew out dan­ger­ous pro­pa­gan­da that the dis­ease is un­der con­trol.

How can that be in the face of the heavy rain­fall that we have been hav­ing and the un­sight­ly over­grown bush­es, aban­doned derelict ve­hi­cles and build­ings, stag­nant ponds, and in­dis­crim­i­nate garbage dump­ing around the coun­try? Why haven't the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions tak­en a more ac­tive role in clean­ing up the na­tion? Why hasn't the pop­u­la­tion been reg­u­lar­ly en­cour­aged to keep their sur­round­ings clean via more per­ma­nent meth­ods? The erad­i­ca­tion of the dread­ed mos­qui­to starts with each of us, but the Min­istry of Health must not give the na­tion the false sense of "all is well," but in­stead ed­u­cate and find a way to keep ed­u­cat­ing the na­tion on ways to keep the Aedes ae­gyp­ti mos­qui­to in check. Post­ing fly­ers and ads are but tem­po­rary re­minders. Come on, Min­is­ter and Min­istry of Health, you can do bet­ter.

The fight against dengue should be year-round, na­tion­wide and up­per­most in the minds of our cit­i­zens.

P King,

Port-of-Spain.