Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh says there is no out­break of malar­ia in this coun­try. He said for the year, there have been just three cas­es of malar­ia.

A ques­tion about an out­break led to an ar­gu­ment in the Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day be­tween the Prime Min­is­ter and the Cou­va South MP, both of whom had to apol­o­gise to the House.

On Thurs­day, Guardian Me­dia re­port­ed that a preg­nant woman was in the In­ten­sive Care Unit at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal af­ter con­tract­ing malar­ia. The woman is said to be a na­tion­al of a coun­try in Africa, who ar­rived suf­fer­ing from the dis­ease.

Deyals­ingh spoke on the health is­sue as he re­spond­ed to ques­tions from Op­po­si­tion MP Rudy In­dars­ingh.

In­dars­ingh’s ques­tion, which had been ap­proved by the Par­lia­ment for pre­sen­ta­tion to Deyals­ingh, had asked if giv­en “re­cent re­ports of a malar­ia out­break”, Deyals­ingh could in­form the House of what “im­me­di­ate mea­sures are be­ing tak­en to ad­dress the spread of this dan­ger­ous dis­ease in the pub­lic in­ter­est.”

Deyals­ingh com­plained the ques­tion spoke to the UNC’s “un­pa­tri­o­tism”, as he said T&T had en­joyed malar­ia-free sta­tus de­ter­mined by WHO since 1965.

A ver­bal clash then erupt­ed be­tween Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and In­dars­ingh shout­ing at each oth­er.

Af­ter House Speak­er Bridgid An­nisette-George called on Row­ley and In­dars­ingh to apol­o­gise, Row­ley said, “Madame Speak­er I humbly apol­o­gise to you and my col­leagues—but enough is enough.”

In­dars­ingh al­so said sor­ry.

“Madame Speak­er, I apol­o­gise but I will not be ac­cused of ly­ing in the pub­lic state­ment.”

Deyals­ingh said an out­break is clas­si­fied as a sig­nif­i­cant de­vi­a­tion from the base­line/nor­mal lev­el of in­fec­tions. He gave the case fig­ures from 2021—nine; 2022—14; 2023—11 with an over­all av­er­age of 11 cas­es a year.

Deyals­ingh said there were three this year and asked, “How on earth can that be an out­break?”

In­dars­ingh said, “Just as we were told 19 ba­bies did not die, can he say how many cas­es of malar­ia were de­tect­ed in the pub­lic health sys­tem across T&T?”

Deyals­ingh re­peat­ed the sta­tis­tics he gave, adding it’s un­true there is an “out­break”. He said most malar­ia cas­es are im­port­ed and that’s why the coun­try isn’t clas­si­fied as an en­dem­ic coun­try for malar­ia.

‘Too much spray­ing
not ide­al’

Deyals­ingh al­so fumed over a query about the strate­gies be­ing used by his min­istry to ad­dress the spread of dengue.

Deyals­ingh said dengue cas­es were not in the “hun­dreds which are be­ing de­tect­ed in the pub­lic health­care sys­tem and are cur­rent­ly be­ing treat­ed,” as claimed by In­dars­ingh.

The min­is­ter ex­plained that there had been a to­tal of 123 con­firmed cas­es for the year thus far.

He again re­fut­ed claims that dengue cas­es were not in the “thou­sands” In­dars­ingh “is speak­ing about.”

Deyals­ingh ex­plained that in Feb­ru­ary, the Min­istry of Health be­gan its sen­si­ti­sa­tion ac­tiv­i­ties, in­clud­ing clin­i­cal re­view of signs and symp­toms, pub­lic out­reach­es, and a fo­cus on source re­duc­tion at homes. He said the lat­ter al­so ad­dressed the re­moval of gut­ter­ings and all kinds of con­tain­ers as the best way to con­trol the Aedes egyp­ti mos­qui­to in com­mu­ni­ties.

He said the min­istry con­duct­ed ul­tra-low vol­ume, per­i­fo­cal work and ther­mal fog­ging.

But he warned, “Spray­ing is not the on­ly so­lu­tion to this be­cause as the Chief Pub­lic Health In­spec­tor ex­plained to T&T yes­ter­day, spray­ing can lead even­tu­al­ly to over spray­ing which caus­es mos­qui­to build­ing up re­sis­tance to the chem­i­cals and al­so it can be dan­ger­ous to hu­man, an­i­mal, bird health if ex­posed too of­ten.”