Dengue fever is a vi­ral ill­ness trans­mit­ted by the bite of an in­fect­ed Aedes Ae­gyp­ti mos­qui­to. Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer, Dr. An­ton Cum­ber­batch has of­fi­cial­ly de­clared a dengue out­break in Trinidad and To­ba­go. Three deaths have been con­firmed, along with two un­con­firmed deaths and more than 600 cas­es of in­fec­tion.

"The rainy sea­son lasts un­til De­cem­ber and we are on­ly in Ju­ly, so this is not go­ing to go away any time soon," Cum­ber­batch ex­plained at a news con­fer­ence in the Min­istry of Health's Port-of-Spain of­fice. "The rate of in­fec­tions are in­creas­ing at out­break speeds. We may not have reached the num­bers as be­fore, but we have to de­clare that we have an out­break on our hands."

Short­ly be­fore this state­ment was made, Health Min­is­ter, Therese Cor­nelis-Bap­tiste said the Min­istry's In­sect Vec­tor Con­trol Unit had been in­creased by 60 peo­ple to start work lat­er this month. She said the heads of the var­i­ous Re­gion­al Pub­lic Health Au­thor­i­ties were brain­storm­ing to come up with mea­sures to com­bat the spread of the virus. "We've come up with the idea of dis­trib­ut­ing gran­ules (lar­vi­ci­dal) at var­i­ous points via the lo­cal gov­ern­ment agen­cies to fa­cil­i­tate cit­i­zens ap­ply­ing these in their tanks di­rect­ly," she said. The pur­pose of the In­sect Vec­tor Con­trol Di­vi­sion of the Min­istry of Health is to pro­tect the na­tion from vec­tor borne dis­eases through ef­fec­tive con­trol mea­sures. This Di­vi­sion has al­ready sprayed more than 21,083 homes na­tion­wide from Ju­ly 16-23, 2010. Bap­tiste rec­om­mend­ed that cit­i­zens open their homes when their area is be­ing sprayed; as­sur­ing that the fog is on­ly dan­ger­ous to mos­qui­toes. One hun­dred and fifty beds have been com­mis­sioned at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex in or­der to ad­dress the prob­lem of bed short­ages. Bap­tiste promised an ad­di­tion­al 22 beds in the near fu­ture to deal with this out­break.

The East­ern Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty has al­so in­stalled mea­sures at the San­gre Grande Hos­pi­tal to man­age the dengue out­break. "The new­ly re­fur­bished Ward 2 has been ded­i­cat­ed to re­view dengue cas­es and hous­ing clients await­ing blood re­ports," stat­ed a com­mu­nique from the Min­istry of Health's web­site. Sev­en ad­di­tion­al doc­tors have al­so been as­signed to com­ple­ment the in­crease of physi­cians as­signed to the Ac­ci­dent and Emer­gency. Eleven ad­di­tion­al beds have been as­signed to Ward 2 to ac­com­mo­date these new de­vel­op­ments. The A&E De­part­ment has been equipped with ad­di­tion­al Dengue Rapid Test Kits and its lab­o­ra­to­ry sup­port strength­ened to en­sure faster re­sults, there­by re­duc­ing the wait­ing pe­ri­od for test re­sults.

The Min­istry al­so as­sures cit­i­zens that all their health fa­cil­i­ties across the na­tion have been equipped with ad­e­quate sup­plies of Dengue Rapid Test Kits and clin­i­cians in the man­age­ment of dengue have had their train­ing up­dat­ed. Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of the South West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (SWRHA) Paula Chester-Cum­ber­batch said ar­eas with preva­lent cas­es of dengue were Mara­bel­la, San Fer­nan­do, Clax­ton Bay and Gas­par­il­lo. She said up to last week, 161 per­sons have been treat­ed for dengue at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal. As the rainy sea­son ad­vances, the Min­istry of Health is tak­ing the nec­es­sary mea­sures to fight this epi­dem­ic; are you? Have you dis­posed of all un­want­ed con­tain­ers in the yard which can col­lect wa­ter, do you emp­ty vas­es reg­u­lar­ly, and do the drains on your com­pound al­low the free flow of wa­ter? Do you need as­sis­tance clean­ing your com­mu­ni­ty? Then con­tact your lo­cal gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tive. If there is a mos­qui­to in­fes­ta­tion in your area, con­tact the In­sect Vec­tor Con­trol Di­vi­sion. Let's rid our coun­try of Dengue.

Chris­tine Dalkan