JANELLE BERNARD

Pro­duc­er

Com­mu­ni­ty ac­tivist Ed­ward Mood­ie says south­ern com­mu­ni­ties are be­ing se­vere­ly af­fect­ed by dengue fever.

Mood­ie says while ef­forts are be­ing made to con­trol the spread of the vi­ral in­fec­tion, the Aedes Ae­gyp­ti mos­qui­toes are breed­ing at an alarm­ing rate.

A guest on to­day’s edi­tion of CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew show, Ed­ward Mood­ie is con­cerned that the of­fi­cial fig­ures for the num­ber of dengue cas­es are not a true re­flec­tion of the num­ber of peo­ple who are be­ing af­fect­ed, as many are us­ing home reme­dies.

“The sta­tis­tics are to­tal­ly wrong,” Mood­ie says, “and not be­cause it is the min­istry’s fault. I don’t want to blame any­body.”

He ex­plains: “Many peo­ple in rur­al ar­eas treat the dengue with paw paw leaves and oth­er cul­tur­al heal­ing meth­ods that we’re ac­cus­tomed to. Many of them nev­er went to a med­ical in­sti­tu­tion to have it re­port­ed.”

Mood­ie warns that spray­ing may not be enough, giv­en the ra­pid­i­ty with which the mos­qui­toes are breed­ing.

“What­ev­er spray­ing method is be­ing used, it is not as ef­fec­tive as we hoped it would be,” he points out, not­ing that dengue cas­es con­tin­ue to rise rapid­ly.

“Fog­ging along the road­way is not ef­fec­tive. By 7o’clock in the evening, if they fog at 5 in the morn­ing,” he notes, “you can­not stand on the road­way—you will be eat­en alive.”

There have been four con­firmed deaths due to dengue, so far this year. 

At present, there are 392 lab­o­ra­to­ry con­firmed cas­es of dengue.