-424 cases for the year

With 424 dengue cases recorded for the year, Health Minister Dr. Leslie Ramsammy has warned that a serious outbreak is likely unless citizens take responsibility to keep their environment clean.

“We will have an outbreak, I am cautioning people, we will have it unless we begin to do something,” Minister Ramsammy told reporters Wednesday, when asked for an update. He revealed that up to last week most of the dengue cases were recorded in Georgetown, East Coast and Lethem, although the numbers have gone down following the fogging in both Georgetown and Lethem. The minister noted that for the same period last year, there were only 108 cases recorded. He said while there were cases that were not being recorded, there is a “genuine increase” not only in Guyana but in all countries of the Americas.

According to Ramsammy, over the last three months the ministry treated more than 3000 homes by focusing on treating the water in tanks and the number one thing that had to be treated were old tyres. “I can only educate people, I can’t come and remove the tanks, [and] I can’t remove the tyres and so on. Dengue would come at the end of the day not because of what we do but because of what we each do. While we have been making some inroads in protecting we are not going to be able to protect unless in this case all of us do it together,” he said.

Fogging is expected to be done soon on the East Coast while Georgetown will be fogged every three months. Ramsammy explained that fogging would help for a few hours as it kills only mosquitoes that are on the outside of homes and buildings.

Almost two months after a suspected dengue death was recorded in Guyana, Ramsammy said that the ministry is yet to receive the test results that would confirm dengue was the cause of death. The person, a female who was associated with a popular Georgetown restaurant, had succumbed early in April at a private institution.

At that time, Ramsammy had said his ministry was investigating the death but that they would first have to ascertain whether the woman had indeed died from dengue. He had said while persons may be diagnosed with dengue it does not mean the disease caused their death.

The minister had said that if indeed the woman died from dengue it would have been from dengue haemorrhagic fever (DHF), which was deadly. While Guyana has seen DHF deaths before, the minister said, they were traced to other countries as the persons were frequent travellers. He added that the ministry would have had to ascertain the person’s travel history and if in fact the woman was in Guyana all the time “then we would have to take it very seriously” as it would mean that Guyana has DHF.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO) website, dengue is transmitted by the bite of an Aedes mosquito infected with any one of the four dengue viruses. It occurs in tropical and sub-tropical areas of the world and symptoms appear three to 14 days after the infective bite. The website said that symptoms range from a mild fever to incapacitating high fever with severe headache, pain behind the eyes, muscle and joint pain, and a rash. There are no specific antiviral medicines for dengue but it is important to maintain hydration.

Use of acetylsalicylic acid (e.g. aspirin) and non- steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (e.g. Ibuprofen) is not recommended.

It was stated that DHF (fever, abdominal pain, vomiting, bleeding) is a potentially lethal complication, affecting mainly children. Early clinical diagnosis and careful clinical management by experienced physicians and nurses increase survival of patients.

There are four distinct, but closely related, viruses that cause dengue. Recovery from infection by one provides lifelong immunity against that virus but confers only partial and transient protection against subsequent infection by the other three viruses.