To­ba­go has re­port­ed its first con­firmed case of dengue fever amid an on­go­ing wave of cas­es in Trinidad since Jan­u­ary 2024. The To­ba­go Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (TRHA) iden­ti­fied the sus­pect­ed case, sent a sam­ple for test­ing, and con­firmed the di­ag­no­sis on Ju­ly 5.

Dr Faith B Yis­rael, Sec­re­tary of the Di­vi­sion of Health, Well­ness and So­cial Pro­tec­tion, in a re­lease, urged those on the is­land to take this sit­u­a­tion se­ri­ous­ly, as one case can quick­ly mul­ti­ply.

She said, “Dengue is a vi­ral in­fec­tion spread by mos­qui­toes and is the fastest-grow­ing mos­qui­to-borne dis­ease. The World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion ranks dengue as one of the top ten glob­al pub­lic health threats, but it is en­tire­ly pre­ventable. En­sure there are no mos­qui­to breed­ing sites in and around your homes.”

The Pub­lic Health Ser­vices De­part­ment will han­dle the stan­dard re­sponse for dengue cas­es. The Vec­tor Con­trol Unit will in­spect the home of the pos­i­tive case and all res­i­dences with­in a 100-me­tre ra­dius to elim­i­nate any mos­qui­to breed­ing sites. In­door resid­ual spray­ing will al­so be con­duct­ed at these lo­ca­tions.

The Aedes ae­gyp­ti mos­qui­to, which spreads dengue fever, can al­so trans­mit oth­er dis­eases such as Chikun­gun­ya, Zi­ka, and yel­low fever, the re­lease re­mind­ed To­bag­o­ni­ans. The pub­lic is urged to take all nec­es­sary pre­cau­tions against mos­qui­to bites.

For more in­for­ma­tion, the pub­lic is in­vit­ed to vis­it the health di­vi­sion’s Face­book page.

—Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les