Ministry officials have assured that measures to prevent the spread of the dengue fever in Guyana are being taken even as there are outbreaks in other parts of the Caribbean region.
This was stated by Director of Vector Control Services at the Ministry of Health, Dr Horace Cox during a recent interview with Stabroek News where he said that the Ministry has been working along with the regions to ensure that the spread of the disease is curbed.
Dr Cox was responding to the query as to what was being done to prevent a dengue outbreak in the country as a recent outbreak of the disease has been reported in St Lucia and St Vincent where fatalities had occurred.
According to the director, in recent times Guyana has had challenges with the management of mosquitoes, however the ministry has a programme that focuses on dengue prevention. Through this programme, Dr Cox explained, the number of cases that are diagnosed are managed and after tests have been done and cases have been confirmed, the data is then filtered to the national programme and assessments are done to determine a number of factors in comparison to the trends of previous years.
“We have heard reports and received reports of increase in cases in some of the regions for examples regions One and Eight,” he said, while adding that they have been working with the regions to combine reports. While that is ongoing, the ministry has continued to mobilise efforts aside from surveillance methods, to determine how to handle the situation in those areas.
He noted that the ministry aims to do Larval Source Management which has to do with managing the larval stage of the mosquitoes.
“We aim to do what is called larval source management so a lot of persons are familiar with fumigation or fogging exercise… But where dengue is concerned the main emphasis in terms of vector control is managing the larval stage” he said. Further he noted that it has to do with getting lots of stagnant drains and other areas that can become breeding grounds for the “Aedes aegypti” mosquito, cleaned.
“We have a programme that accommodates for vector control workers going out into the different communities to assess applying different methodologies whether this community is at increased risk of a dengue outbreak and therefore to feed that information back to us so we can then mobilise a response in keeping with the field findings.” Dr Cox said. This comes with challenges, he added, while noting that they have found in the past that there is the risk for an outbreak at any given time within the central and coastal areas like Georgetown.
“It isn’t to say that those in the hinterland communities are not at risk… But we find that those in the central areas from the assessments we have done, they are at increased risk” he stated.
Based on information available to the ministry, Dr Cox said that there is no outbreak in the country but they will continue working with the regions to gather information to be able to address the issue if an outbreak does occur.
