AN­GE­LO JE­DIDI­AH

an­ge­lo.je­didi­ah@guardian.co.tt

Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh is as­sur­ing Trin­bag­o­ni­ans that there is no rea­son to wor­ry yet about the emer­gence of a dead­ly fun­gus in the Unit­ed States.

Amer­i­can me­dia has been flood­ed with re­ports fol­low­ing the lat­est an­nounce­ment from the Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion which la­belled the Can­di­da au­ris or C. au­ris fun­gus a na­tion­al health con­cern.

Ac­cord­ing to the CDC, it can cause blood­stream in­fec­tions, wound in­fec­tions and ear in­fec­tions. It has al­so been iso­lat­ed from res­pi­ra­to­ry and urine spec­i­mens, but it is un­clear if it caus­es in­fec­tions in the lung or blad­der.

The dead­ly fun­gus is said to be drug-re­sis­tant and caus­es se­vere ill­ness in pa­tients at long-term health fa­cil­i­ties and peo­ple with weak­ened im­mune sys­tems.

Asked for a com­ment on the is­sue out­side the Red House in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, Deyals­ingh told Guardian Me­dia that he is aware of the sit­u­a­tion in the US but gave his as­sur­ance that the min­istry’s team will be look­ing in­to it.

“We’ll have to have the CMO (Dr Roshan Paras­ram) look at it,” Deyals­ingh as­sured be­fore head­ing in­to the Red House for the Sen­ate sit­ting.

Mean­while, as cit­i­zens con­tin­ue to raise con­cern over the re-emer­gence of the hand-foot-and-mouth dis­ease, Ca­roni East MP Dr Rishad Seecha­ran said it re­mains a con­cern, es­pe­cial­ly for stu­dents writ­ing the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment next week.

“Should Stan­dard Five stu­dents get that virus, they would have to be in quar­an­tine. So, they are at risk of miss­ing their ex­am­i­na­tion and pos­si­bly hav­ing to wait an­oth­er year to write to get in­to sec­ondary schools. So, it should be a con­cern. It is very trans­mis­si­ble,” Seecha­ran said.

When asked about whether there were mech­a­nisms in place to deal with this, how­ev­er, Deyals­ingh told Guardian Me­dia that there is noth­ing to wor­ry about.