Siparia May­or Dood­nath Mayrhoo claims there are 275 sus­pect­ed dengue cas­es in Siparia and two sus­pect­ed dengue deaths. He al­so claims the In­sect Vec­tor Con­trol De­part­ment (IVCD) in Siparia re­mains down with no ve­hi­cles or re­sources. Speak­ing dur­ing a press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, Mayrhoo de­scribed the dengue sit­u­a­tion as a cri­sis in Siparia and Pe­nal/Debe.

He claimed it has reached alarm­ing lev­els, with con­firmed cas­es ac­count­ing for half of the na­tion­al sta­tis­tics. “To date, there are 275 sus­pect­ed cas­es of dengue in the re­gion, with 110 cas­es ad­dressed through ther­mal fog­ging op­er­a­tions,” he said.

He added that as cas­es rise, both the Pe­nal/Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion and the Siparia Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion have ramped up spray­ing. “The re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for spray­ing falls un­der the Min­istry of Health, not lo­cal gov­ern­ment bod­ies, but we have been pick­ing up the slack be­cause the IVCD in Siparia is down,” he said.

Mayrhoo not­ed that the Siparia Bor­ough has one UL (Ul­tra Low) ma­chine and three ther­mal units. “We con­tin­ue dai­ly to do spray­ing in the morn­ings and evenings. We have in­creased spray­ing, and now we are go­ing on a Sat­ur­day, so we have in­curred over­time for the spray­ing done on Sat­ur­day,” Mayrhoo added. Giv­ing a de­tailed break­down of the ex­ten­sive ef­forts to com­bat the mos­qui­to pop­u­la­tion, Mayrhoo said, “We have sprayed sev­er­al homes. In Ica­cos, we did 399; in San Fran­cique, we did 510 homes; from the SS Erin Road Pe­nal to the Quinam area, we did 840 homes,” he re­vealed.

How­ev­er, he said re­sources are now run­ning low. “We have chem­i­cals to last the next ten days and gran­ules to last six months. We were giv­en some gran­ules from Point Fortin Bor­ough, for which we are thank­ful, but at this time, we need to get more re­sources giv­en the amount of dengue cas­es.”

Mayrhoo said the deaths of two teenagers from Fyz­abad and Siparia who con­tract­ed dengue fever un­der­scored the need to have a com­pre­hen­sive, col­lab­o­ra­tive mos­qui­to erad­i­ca­tion pro­gramme.

“Quin­ton Gabriel, a young teenage res­i­dent, died from sus­pect­ed dengue. Had the min­istries been do­ing work in the dry sea­son to get rid of mos­qui­toes, maybe Quin­ton Gabriel would have been alive to­day,” Mayrhoo said.

He claimed the high­est num­ber of cas­es has been re­port­ed in the Wood­land Pluck Road area, which al­so ex­pe­ri­ences the largest amount of flood­ing. “This area in Wood­land is the last to be drained, ex­ac­er­bat­ing the prob­lem. We have the most cas­es in those ar­eas. I am call­ing on the Min­istry of Works to clear these wa­ter­cours­es. It is eas­i­er to clean the wa­ter­cours­es when they are low in the dry sea­son,” the may­or said.

He called for im­me­di­ate ac­tion. “The com­mu­ni­ty’s health and safe­ty de­pend on a swift and co­or­di­nat­ed re­sponse to pre­vent fur­ther loss of life and con­tain the spread of this dis­ease,” Mayrhoo said.

Mean­while, coun­cil­lor for La For­tune/ Debe North Kr­ish­na Per­sads­ingh claimed dengue had in­creased ten­fold in T&T when com­pared with last year. He said St Patrick ac­count­ed for 29 per cent of cas­es, while Vic­to­ria ac­count­ed for 23 per cent. Per­sads­ingh be­lieves these sta­tis­tics show that the com­mu­ni­ties that fall un­der the ju­ris­dic­tion of the Pe­nal/Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion and the Siparia Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion ac­count for more than half of the dengue cas­es na­tion­al­ly. —Rad­hi­ca De Sil­va