Ali­cia Llanos

The num­ber of re­port­ed dengue cas­es, as of Ju­ly 30, are 1,639, with the high­est num­ber re­port­ed in To­ba­go.The sta­tis­tics were pro­vid­ed yes­ter­day by Health Min­is­ter Dr Fuad Khan at yes­ter­day's launch of the na­tion­al cam­paign ti­tled "Stop" at the Hy­att Re­gency, Port-of-Spain.

The cam­paign is a col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the Min­istry of For­eign Af­fairs and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and the Min­istry of Health to ed­u­cate the pub­lic on strate­gies to stop the spread of dengue.Sta­tis­tics showed the high­est num­ber of sus­pect­ed dengue cas­es were in To­ba­go with over 450 cas­es, Ca­roni with 250 cas­es and St An­drew/ St David with just over 200 cas­es.

The min­istry's sta­tis­tics showed 246 less cas­es of dengue than those pro­vid­ed by the min­istry's In­sect Vec­tor Con­trol Di­vi­sion.Ac­cord­ing to sta­tis­tics giv­en to the me­dia on Wednes­day, the In­sect Vec­tor Con­trol Di­vi­sion es­ti­mat­ed there had been 1,885 cas­es of dengue from Jan­u­ary to Ju­ly 22.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, In­sect Vec­tor Con­trol Di­vi­sion spe­cial­ist med­ical of­fi­cer Dr Clive Tilluck­d­har­ry said the sta­tis­tics giv­en out by the di­vi­sion on Wednes­day were "un­of­fi­cial".He said the di­vi­sion in gen­er­al re­ceived more calls con­cern­ing "sus­pect­ed" cas­es of dengue than the min­istry.He said those re­ports were then sent to the min­istry where each case was thor­ough­ly ex­am­ined to de­ter­mine whether or not it was dengue.

Tilluck­d­har­ry said it was af­ter the me­dia brief­ing on Wednes­day did he got the of­fi­cial sta­tis­tics from the min­istry.He said what the pub­lic need­ed to take note of was not the dif­fer­ing sta­tis­tics but the fact the min­istry was tak­ing the spread of dengue se­ri­ous­ly.

Speak­ing to the me­dia af­ter yes­ter­day's cam­paign launch, Min­is­ter Khan as­sured the pub­lic the min­istry was pre­pared to deal with sus­pect­ed and con­firmed cas­es of dengue.Khan said in re­sponse to the amount of dengue cas­es, it had man­dat­ed some re­gion­al health cen­tres to stay open un­til 10 pm and some 24 hours.

He said the Ari­ma Health Cen­tre would be open 24 hours and the St Joseph Health Cen­tre un­til 10 pm.Khan said work was be­ing done to have the Ce­dros Health Cen­tre stay open 24 hours or open un­til 10 pm.He said all health cen­tres were equipped with rapid test­ing kits and med­ica­tion.