Health au­thor­i­ties have con­firmed an out­break of dengue fever in St. Vin­cent and the Grenadines, three years af­ter the last out­break claimed at least sev­en lives, most of them chil­dren.

The Min­istry of Health, Well­ness and the En­vi­ron­ment said on Fri­day that its Epi­demi­ol­o­gy Unit has record­ed 119 dengue fever cas­es so far in 2024 and that of those cas­es, 23 were in June and 82 last month.

“Based on the epi­demi­o­log­i­cal da­ta, the num­ber of lab con­firmed cas­es of dengue fever has ex­ceed­ed the thresh­old of the num­ber ex­pect­ed in­di­cat­ing that there is a dengue fever out­break in St Vin­cent and the Grenadines,” the min­istry said.

The min­istry is urg­ing the pub­lic to ad­here to all the ba­sic pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sures to pre­vent the spread of vec­tor borne dis­eases dur­ing the sum­mer va­ca­tion.

“As we ap­proach the month of Au­gust, the pub­lic is re­mind­ed that we are still with­in the hur­ri­cane sea­son and Au­gust is ex­pect­ed to be hot­ter than nor­mal.

“These weath­er pat­terns can cre­ate ide­al breed­ing sites for the aedes ae­gyp­ti mos­qui­to. This mos­qui­to car­ries Dengue Fever, Zi­ka and Chik V.,” the min­istry said in a press state­ment.

It said that to com­bat the fur­ther spread of the dengue virus, the gov­ern­ment has im­ple­ment­ed In­creased pub­lic aware­ness and health ed­u­ca­tion in­ter­ven­tions as well as in­creased sur­veil­lance in­clud­ing the use of GIS map­ping for more tar­get­ed source re­duc­tion.

It al­so strength­en­ing the hu­man re­source ca­pac­i­ty at the vec­tor con­trol unit with ad­di­tion­al staff for source re­duc­tion and in­creased fog­ging ex­er­cise across St Vin­cent.

At present, a pri­vate com­pa­ny has been con­tract­ed to pro­vide ad­di­tion­al sup­port to the vec­tor con­trol unit for fog­ging and source re­duc­tion in the South­ern Grenadines. This is cur­rent­ly on­go­ing.

“How­ev­er, we are call­ing on all home­own­ers, com­mu­ni­ty groups to search and de­stroy mos­qui­to breed­ing sites or those with the po­ten­tial to be­come breed­ing sites in and around your set­tings,” the min­istry said.

Peo­ple at risk of ex­pe­ri­enc­ing se­vere symp­toms of dengue fever are chil­dren, preg­nant women and the el­der­ly es­pe­cial­ly those with lim­it­ed mo­bil­i­ty are be­ing ad­vised to take ex­tra pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sures as the virus can be dead­ly.

“The Min­istry will con­tin­ue to mon­i­tor the sit­u­a­tion close­ly lo­cal­ly, re­gion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly and will pro­vide up­dates to the pub­lic ac­cord­ing­ly,” the press state­ment said.