Trinidad: Citizens warned against bathing in three Chaguaramas beaches

(Trinidad Guardian) The In­sti­tute of Ma­rine Af­fairs (IMA) said it is con­sid­er­ing plac­ing signs at sev­er­al beach­es along the North-West­ern Penin­su­la of Trinidad af­ter it found high lev­els of bac­te­ria present in the wa­ter, which it said, could in­crease the prob­a­bil­i­ty of con­tract­ing in­fec­tions and oth­er ail­ments.

The IMA has now ad­vised that beach­go­ers avoid bathing at Wel­come Bay through­out the year, and at William’s Bay and Chagville Beach dur­ing and af­ter rain­fall.

Speak­ing at the sixth com­mu­ni­ty re­search sym­po­sium ti­tled The Sea and Me: Liveli­hood and Learn­ing, on Wednes­day, mi­cro­bi­ol­o­gist with the IMA Shel­don Ra­moutar ex­plained that the bac­te­ria were in­tro­duced in­to the wa­ters due to sew­er­age. He ex­plained that the pres­ence of these bac­te­ria in the wa­ter did not guar­an­tee that an in­di­vid­ual ex­posed to it would get sick, how­ev­er, he said it did in­crease the prob­a­bil­i­ty of con­tract­ing an ill­ness.

Ra­moutar ex­plained that “we could have res­pi­ra­to­ry tract in­fec­tions down to the ears, eyes, nasal cav­i­ty, skin. You can get gas­tro, even di­ar­rhoea, they (symp­toms) could even be mis­tak­en for food poi­son­ing.”

He ex­plained that young chil­dren were es­pe­cial­ly at risk of get­ting ill when bathing in these wa­ters. “I know most of the old­er folks say I bathe in this place so long and I nev­er get sick. Well, some­times they might have got­ten sick when they were young but now they can with­stand it,” he said.

Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed William’s Bay yes­ter­day to speak to beach­go­ers about the IMA’s find­ings. They all were not sur­prised about the re­sults due to the wa­ters of­ten be­ing vis­i­bly dirty. But they agreed that the pub­lic need­ed to be made aware of the risks of bathing at these beach­es.

Ac­cord­ing to the IMA, those who bathe in the wa­ters with open wounds are al­so at risk of con­tract­ing an in­fec­tion in ad­di­tion to those who are im­muno-com­pro­mised.

The IMA said it will be en­gag­ing in a pub­lic aware­ness and ed­u­ca­tion pro­gramme.

But con­tract­ing an ail­ment can of­ten be as sim­ple as in­gest­ing some of the wa­ter while bathing.

Guardian Me­dia tried to con­tact the Ch­aguara­mas De­vel­op­ment Agency (CDA) chair­man Nar­ine Gupte Lutch­me­di­al but all cal­lls went unan­swered.

The IMA said it will be en­gag­ing in a pub­lic aware­ness and ed­u­ca­tion pro­gramme.