The Vector Control Services will recommence house-to-house health inspections, including dropping Abate larvicide tablets in drains to kill mosquito larvae as a measure to reduce the rapidly rising cases of chikungunya, Chief Medical Officer Shamdeo Persaud said yesterday.
Speaking with Stabroek News, Persaud said Vector Control Services were given a deadline that by the end of October, 100 houses in each region should be inspected and treated. He said public health workers will visit houses, treat stagnant water and educate the households. The health workers will then place a health card on the backdoor of the house to grade its level of sanitation.
He said once the programme is successful, they will target the entire population every month with house-to-house health inspection. He further indicated that Abate larvicide tablets—which control vector-borne diseases by destroying the vector before they reach maturity—will be thrown into the drains and stagnant water to kill the mosquito larvae.
Suspected cases of chikungunya have risen to 5,232 while only 103 have been confirmed, Persaud said. He noted that the house-to-house programme coupled with fogging will definitely reduce spread of the virus.
Residents in Buxton, Annandale, Friendship and Paradise, however, were not so enthusiastic about the Health Ministry’s fogging exercises since they say their areas were never fogged from the inception. Residents in Buxton said since the ministry announced the first cases of the virus in the country, and started fogging villages on the East Coast Demerara, Buxton has not been fogged once to date.
“No fogging has been done in Buxton…We are being marginalised because this was one of the areas that didn’t support them so they wouldn’t help us,” one resident said. “It’s sad but look how we burial ground overgrown with bush and the trenches ain’t clean,” the woman added.
“We are concerned about chikungunya, but Buxton is a breeding site for other sickness… This is not just chikungunya alone… We have overgrown trenches and stagnant water. The bushes growing high, the burial ground full of weeds and this is a major concern for us,” another woman, who asked not to be named, said.
A man from Paradise, East Coast Demerara also complained that fogging was not carried out in his village. He said all they were hearing about was fogging in Georgetown but nothing was being done to protect the community. “As far as I’m concerned we are not prepared for any disease. If Ebola come we dead because if we were not prepared for chikungunya how can we be prepared for something big as Ebola. Guyana dead if it comes,” he said.
An Annandale resident said she is pleading with the ministry to do something in her village to prevent chikungunya from spreading.
When Stabroek News visited the Buxton Health Centre, which provide services to three of the four villages, a health worker said they were treating over 10 patients every day with symptoms.
She said the majority of these patients were from Buxton and as the numbers increased, the health centre began to run out of Diclofenac injections to treat the joint pains.
Health workers at the centre then started to create awareness on the virus every time they had a large turnout at clinics, so as to reduce the spread in their catchment areas. “I think a lot of people have heard about chikungunya and the symptoms but they are not fully educated on how to prevent it,” she said.
When the issue of these communities not being fogged was raised with Persaud, he said he was unaware of the situation and would look into it. But, he said, from his recollection, the Vector Control Services were fogging from Golden Grove to Georgetown.
He also stated that his instructions were very clear on the public’s role in reducing the spread. “…take your medication and stay at home because even though your pain eases and the rash has cleared up you still remain infectious,” he said.
“We are really appealing to the public to do this. From the inception we have told them to stay in their houses, especially under a net because they would still be infectious even though the symptoms have left,” Persaud stated, adding that doctors were instructing patients to stay at home. “You might feel well but you are not well,” he said.
