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Thursday, July 10, 2025

Health Minister says more dengue cases in 2024 than last year

by

Carisa Lee
390 days ago
20240615
Nurse Sparking Jones draws blood from Minister of Health Terrence Deyalsingh during the Ministry of Health’s Blood Donation Drive at the Brian Lara Promenade, Port-of-Spain yesterday.

Nurse Sparking Jones draws blood from Minister of Health Terrence Deyalsingh during the Ministry of Health’s Blood Donation Drive at the Brian Lara Promenade, Port-of-Spain yesterday.

JAYDEN GILES

Re­porter

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh says the coun­try has ex­pe­ri­enced an in­crease in dengue cas­es this year when com­pared to last year. But ac­cord­ing to the Health Min­is­ter, no deaths have been record­ed so far, which he de­scribed as cru­cial.

“Con­firmed 2023—11, 2024—123, so we have seen an in­crease in con­firmed cas­es ... If you re­search dengue around the world you will see dengue is be­com­ing a huge pub­lic health prob­lem around the world, cas­es have ex­plod­ed,” he said while on the Bri­an Lara Prom­e­nade yes­ter­day.

The min­is­ter added that there was al­so an in­crease in sus­pect­ed cas­es from 34 in 2021 to 142 this year.

The World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion de­scribed dengue as a vi­ral in­fec­tion that spreads from aedes ae­gyp­ti mos­qui­toes to peo­ple. It is more com­mon in trop­i­cal and sub­trop­i­cal cli­mates and com­mon symp­toms are high fever, headache, body aches, nau­sea, and rash. Se­vere dengue can cause shock, in­ter­nal bleed­ing, and death.

Deyals­ingh re­vealed that dengue is not the chron­ic ill­ness it used to be in this coun­try and from next week, his min­istry will launch a se­ries of ac­tiv­i­ties to get peo­ple to look at their sur­round­ings.

“The main fight on dengue is not spray­ing, that is one. But the main fight is what we call source re­duc­tion at the lev­el of the com­mu­ni­ty and your house­hold,” Deyals­ingh said.

These in­clude drain­ing the wa­ter from flower pots, gut­ter­ing, and bar­rels with wa­ter, where these mos­qui­toes lay their eggs.


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