With this coun­try re­port­ing more dengue cas­es this year than last year and two dengue deaths re­port­ed so far, for­mer health min­is­ter Dr Fuad Khan is urg­ing the Gov­ern­ment to con­sid­er ge­net­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied mos­qui­toes to help fight the spread of the dis­ease.

Khan, who served as Health Min­is­ter for one term, pro­posed in 2011 that ge­net­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied (GM) male mos­qui­toes, which have been suc­cess­ful­ly used in oth­er coun­tries to com­bat the Aedes ae­gyp­ti mos­qui­toes (which cause dengue fever), could be a so­lu­tion for T&T.

How­ev­er, this project nev­er ma­te­ri­alised. Speak­ing on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew, Khan again sug­gest­ed that ge­net­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied male mos­qui­toes could be ef­fec­tive­ly used. “I think that should be looked at again be­cause it has been used suc­cess­ful­ly in Brazil and Flori­da.

Ge­net­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied male mos­qui­toes breed­ing with fe­male Aedes ae­gyp­ti is an ap­proach we need to con­sid­er. It’s im­por­tant to find a sci­en­tif­ic method to deal with these mos­qui­toes,” Khan said. He al­so called for up­dat­ed leg­is­la­tion to en­sure that peo­ple are man­dat­ed to keep their sur­round­ings clean. He said if they fail to do so, they should be pe­nalised.

“It’s cru­cial to find a sci­en­tif­ic way to man­age Aedes ae­gyp­ti mos­qui­toes. Breed­ing grounds are straight­for­ward. Every­one should main­tain their sur­round­ings, and there should be leg­is­la­tion en­forc­ing this. If the in­sect vec­tor con­trol team finds that you’re not com­ply­ing with warn­ings to clean your yard, you’re en­dan­ger­ing pub­lic safe­ty,” he stat­ed.

Khan added, “Spray­ing doesn’t work ef­fec­tive­ly be­cause the breed­ing ground for mos­qui­toes is in stag­nant wa­ter and drains. When you spray, you might kill the mos­qui­toes fly­ing around tem­porar­i­ly, but you don’t ad­dress the lar­vae in the wa­ter. Spray­ing on­ly kills what’s on the sur­face.”

As of June 6 this year, the Health Min­istry said there were 123 cas­es. On Sun­day, the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly re­port­ed the first dengue case on the is­land for the year. Mean­while, for­mer San­gre Grande Chair­man Anil Juter­man claimed that a fe­male from the San­gre Grande re­gion died from dengue fever. This in­for­ma­tion could not be in­de­pen­dent­ly con­firmed by Guardian Me­dia.

How­ev­er, San­gre Grande Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion Chair­man Ken­wyn Phillip said his cor­po­ra­tion is work­ing with In­sect Vec­tor Con­trol, and they are do­ing their part to as­sist with mos­qui­toes in the area and any spread of dengue fever. On Sun­day, the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) urged Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh to de­clare dengue a pub­lic health emer­gency.

Ca­roni East MP Dr Rishad Seecha­ran made this call dur­ing the Op­po­si­tion’s week­ly press brief­ing. Seecha­ran claimed that the cas­es con­firmed by the Health Min­istry so far do not ac­cu­rate­ly re­flect the na­tion­al in­fec­tion rate, as the sta­tis­tics are based on­ly on cas­es con­firmed through lab­o­ra­to­ry test­ing. “Many thou­sands more are left un­di­ag­nosed, with mild to mod­er­ate symp­toms,” he said.

Seecha­ran al­so point­ed out that Puer­to Ri­co de­clared a pub­lic health emer­gency af­ter ob­serv­ing more cas­es in the last five months than in the en­tire pre­vi­ous year.