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Saturday, July 12, 2025

Mos­qui­toes now spread­ing Guil­lain�Barr� syn­drome

7 cases confirmed

by

20160805

As T&T re­mains on height­ened alert against Zi­ka, it has been dis­cov­ered that the virus can al­so present it­self as the Guil­lain�Barr� syn­drome (GBS), a rapid-on­set mus­cle weak­ness caused by the im­mune sys­tem dam­ag­ing the pe­riph­er­al ner­vous sys­tem.

Dr Clive Tilluck­d­har­ry, act­ing chief med­ical of­fi­cer, said yes­ter­day that an­nu­al­ly there were about two cas­es of GBS re­port­ed, but since Jan­u­ary this year to date this fig­ure has tripled, as there were now sev­en cas­es of peo­ple be­ing in­fect­ed, the ma­jor­i­ty of which were ad­mit­ted to the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex, Mt Hope.

Tilluck­d­har­ry made the state­ment at a press con­fer­ence at the Min­istry of Health's Park Street, Port-of-Spain, head­quar­ters yes­ter­day.

To date there have been some 215 con­firmed Zi­ka cas­es, but the num­ber of sus­pect­ed cas­es is much high­er. He said feed­back from the Na­tion­al Sur­veil­lance Unit al­so showed there were 176 sus­pect­ed Zi­ka cas­es, but this fig­ure was most def­i­nite­ly much high­er. Say­ing that GBS could hap­pen af­ter any acute in­fec­tion, Tilluck­d­har­ry added, "I have seen it years ago where one or two dengue cas­es present with Guil­lain�Barr� syn­drome. It al­so pre­sent­ed with seizures, epilep­sy." He said Zi­ka could be a mild dis­ease but it could present in many ways, the ma­jor­i­ty of it be­ing with­out any symp­toms.

"There are cas­es of high fever, mus­cle and joint pains and rash, but we have to take all pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sures against the trans­mis­sion of dis­eases by mos­qui­toes," Tilluck­d­har­ry said.

It was al­so re­vealed that 78 women had been di­ag­nosed with Zi­ka and that two women had giv­en birth to ba­bies while they had the virus. How­ev­er, Med­ical Chief of Staff at Mt Hope Women's Hos­pi­tal (MH­WH), Dr Karen So­han, said the ba­bies were re­port­ed to be nor­mal. She said brain scans per­formed on the two ba­bies born in March and last week re­spec­tive­ly had not re­vealed any ab­nor­mal­i­ties. It was al­so an­nounced that there were five con­firmed cas­es of chikun­gun­ya while dengue cas­es to date stood at 25. And like Zi­ka, Tilluck­d­har­ry said the sus­pect­ed cas­es of these virus­es were al­so high­er, as there were 93 sus­pect­ed cas­es of ChikV.

He said when ChikV first sur­faced in this coun­try in 2014 there were 340 con­firmed cas­es, but now there were some spo­radic cas­es.

In 2014 there were just over 5,000 dengue cas­es and in 2015, 1,600 re­port­ed cas­es. What was even more fright­en­ing, Tilluck­d­har­ry said, was that in Brazil, the Zi­ka virus was de­tect­ed in the sali­vary glands of the Culex mos­qui­to and in T&T over 90 per cent of the mos­qui­toes be­long to that group.

Dr Roshan Parsaram, spe­cial­ist med­ical of­fi­cer in the In­sect Vec­tor Con­trol, said there have been in­creased in­ter­sec­toral col­lab­o­ra­tions specif­i­cal­ly with the 14 re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions through the es­tab­lish­ment of a tech­ni­cal com­mit­tee. He said tech­ni­cal guid­ance was al­so pro­vid­ed re­gard­ing pes­ti­cide use and vec­tor con­trol ac­tiv­i­ties.

Parsaram said a "state-of-the art ge­o­graph­i­cal sys­tem" for the In­sect Vec­tor Con­trol Di­vi­sion was ex­pect­ed to be fi­nalised with­in the next quar­ter and would as­sist the di­vi­sion to ex­am­ine, in re­al time, dis­ease trends as well as vec­tor habi­tats and po­ten­tial breed­ing sites so as to im­prove op­er­a­tional ef­fi­cien­cy.

Symp­toms of GBS

GBS symp­toms in­clude weak­ness of the arms and legs and, in se­vere cas­es, can af­fect the mus­cles that con­trol breath­ing. These symp­toms can last a few weeks or sev­er­al months. Most peo­ple ful­ly re­cov­er from GBS, though some peo­ple have per­ma­nent dam­age. Very few peo­ple die from GBS.

Source–Cen­tres for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion, US

Pri­vate test­ing poor

Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh, who had been re­cent­ly di­ag­nosed with dengue, said yes­ter­day that peo­ple should be wary of go­ing to pri­vate fa­cil­i­ties to test for Zi­ka. He said this was es­pe­cial­ly so for preg­nant women, as some of these in­sti­tu­tions may not be prop­er­ly equipped to do such test­ing. He said the pub­lic hos­pi­tals had the req­ui­site tests with the req­ui­site sen­si­tiv­i­ty to de­tect the Zi­ka virus. "So these false neg­a­tive tests...you want to avoid that and the Caribbean Pub­lic Health Agency is the on­ly in­sti­tu­tion in Trinidad that has the PCR test (Poly­merase Chain Re­ac­tion)," Deyals­ingh added.

PCR is used to re­pro­duce (am­pli­fy) se­lect­ed sec­tions of DNA or RNA for analy­sis. Deyals­ingh said as coun­tries around the world con­tin­ued to grap­ple with lack of re­sources, it was im­prob­a­ble to test this coun­try's en­tire pop­u­la­tion for Zi­ka as fo­cus con­tin­ued on the most vul­ner­a­ble.

On glob­al re­ports that Zi­ka may be sex­u­al­ly trans­mit­ted, Deyals­ingh said in larg­er coun­tries with a much larg­er pop­u­la­tion this was de­tect­ed in a few in­stances, not in small­er coun­tries like T&T.


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