Melis­sa Doughty

Min­is­ter of Health Dr Fuad Khan said yes­ter­day there has been a ten per cent de­crease in re­port­ed cas­es of dengue from last year's fig­ures and stressed that there is no out­break of dengue fever. The min­is­ter said this as he de­liv­ered a speech when 12 new ve­hi­cles were hand­ed over to the In­sect Vec­tor Con­trol Di­vi­sion at the Ve­hi­cle Man­age­ment Com­pa­ny (VM­COTT), Beetham Gar­dens, Port-of-Spain.

Khan said his min­istry is al­so look­ing at the pos­si­ble use of an en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly-friend­ly aer­i­al spray in its fight against mos­qui­toes which cause dengue. At the func­tion, VM­COTT hand­ed over to the min­istry 12 new Toy­ota Hi­ace 15-seater ve­hi­cles, paint­ed a dark green with the min­istry's lo­go on each side pan­el. CEO of VM­COTT Joel Brown said the com­pa­ny will be pur­chas­ing 22 new am­bu­lances on the min­istry's be­half as well.

Brown was joined by Dr Ak­e­nath Misir, Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer, and Khan. "[The bus­es] will ben­e­fit Trinidad and To­ba­go by al­low­ing the min­istry to re­spond to an in­creased num­ber of re­quests from the pub­lic for house in­spec­tions and spray­ing ex­er­cis­es," Khan said. The num­ber of vec­tor-con­trol ve­hi­cles, the min­is­ter said, has in­creased from 61 to 73, and they can now vis­it up to 5,000 hous­es dai­ly.

Khan al­so said in the first 22 weeks of 2012, there were 1,215 re­port­ed cas­es of dengue fever as com­pared to the first 22 weeks of 2011, when there were 1,357 re­port­ed cas­es. He urged cit­i­zens to keep their sur­round­ings clean and to dis­pose of all un­want­ed con­tain­ers which could col­lect wa­ter and pro­vide a place for mos­qui­toes to breed.

Dur­ing the ques­tion-and-an­swer ses­sion, a mem­ber of the In­sect Vec­tor Con­trol Unit asked for the min­is­ter's as­sis­tance in get­ting the pub­lic to dis­pose prop­er­ly of used and old tyres, which al­so pro­vide a haven for mos­qui­toes.