GUARDIAN ME­DIA NEWS­ROOM

Two Coun­ty Med­ical Of­fi­cers (CMOs) are warn­ing that mem­bers of the pub­lic are still not tak­ing the dengue is­sue as se­ri­ous­ly as they should.

The doc­tors, who are at­tached to the Ca­roni and Nar­i­va/Ma­yaro dis­tricts—with Ca­roni con­firmed as a high in­ci­dence area for dengue fever in­fec­tions—are con­cerned that peo­ple may still be tak­ing the virus as a joke, be­cause in 75 per cent of cas­es, in­fect­ed peo­ple do not dis­play symp­toms.

How­ev­er, Ca­roni CMO Dr Jea­nine St Bernard told CNC3's The Morn­ing Brew show that in the wet sea­son, it is even more im­por­tant for peo­ple to be vig­i­lant and as­cer­tain week­ly if their sur­round­ings are con­ducive to mos­qui­to breed­ing.

“We need peo­ple to go and walk around their yard at least once a week,” Dr St Bernard said.

“You see how the weath­er goes… It rains and then it’s dry.  So the wa­ter that would have been murky and not suit­able for the breed­ing of mos­qui­toes,” she ex­plained, “all that mud and dirt set­tles so now you have the love­ly, clear stag­nant wa­ter, which are the op­ti­mal breed­ing con­di­tions for the mos­qui­to.”

She added: “We ac­tu­al­ly all need to make that com­mit­ment.  Is it every Sun­day you’re go­ing to walk around your yard? You have to.”

And Nar­i­va/Ma­yaro CMO Dr Clem Ra­goo­bar says mem­bers of the pub­lic can make spe­cial re­quests to get ac­cess chem­i­cals that can help elim­i­nate mos­qui­to breed­ing sites on their prop­er­ty.

“There are in­sec­ti­cide gran­ules that are put in the small con­tain­ers and that kills the [mos­qui­to] lar­va and pu­pa,” Dr Ra­goo­bar said.

A dengue vac­cine cur­rent­ly ex­ists, and mem­bers of the pub­lic have ques­tioned why it is not avail­able in T&T.

Dr St Bernard ex­plained why it is a con­tro­ver­sial op­tion and not be­ing of­fered in this coun­try.

“We have not cho­sen to go with that be­cause there isn’t ev­i­dence to prove that it is ac­tu­al­ly safe,” she not­ed.  “So, it is not some­thing the Min­istry of Health is rec­om­mend­ing that we go af­ter and use in the pop­u­la­tion.”

“What we need to do,” she stat­ed, “is pre­vent the mos­qui­to bites by pre­vent­ing and re­duc­ing the breed­ing of the mos­qui­to right with­in our homes.”

Mean­while, Nar­i­va/Ma­yaro CMO Dr Clem Ra­goo­bar ad­dressed con­cerns raised by mem­bers of the pub­lic about the safe­ty of the chem­i­cals used to spray mos­qui­to breed­ing sites.

“It has been proven that the in­sec­ti­cides used at the spe­cif­ic con­cen­tra­tions are safe—safe for the en­vi­ron­ment, safe for hu­mans and safe for oth­er an­i­mals,” Dr Ra­goo­bar as­sured.  “And I think that the ben­e­fits far out­weigh the risks.”

The CMOs un­der­scored that pre­ven­tion is the key and en­cour­aged the pub­lic to ex­er­cise per­son­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to en­sure their en­vi­ron­ment is not con­ducive to the breed­ing of the dengue fever vec­tor—the Aedes Ae­gyp­ti mos­qui­to.