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All dengue cases will be looked into
7/31/2010
CHIEF Environmental Health Officer, Tyrone Applewhaite is giving the assurance that 100 percent of the suspected and confirmed cases of dengue fever will be investigated.
Speaking yesterday during a press conference at the Ministry of Health, Applewhaite said that his department will continue to work closely with the polyclinics to ensure that they can get to the affected areas as soon as possible to do the necessary chemical treatments.
Referring to the cases of dengue reported thus far, the Chief Environmental Health Officer said that of the polyclinics, the Randall Phillips Polyclinic, which covers Christ Church, parts of St. Philip and St. Michael has received the highest number of complaints. In addition, he noted that fairly high levels were also recorded by the Maurice Byer Polyclinic, while the Winston Scott and Black Rock Polyclinic were relatively stable. Applewhaite went on to explain that within each of these catchments, there are certain localities in which there is extremely high activity and one such area, he stated, is Sunset Crest.
Noting the importance of being vigilant where vectors are concerned, he added that the Ministry of Health has been contemplating the use of strong educational programme and a persuasive type of programme to encourage persons to be more responsible. However, he revealed that in situations where things are extremely bad, they would then take the necessary steps to take people to court.
“We would have recently opened our Environmental Health Training Centre, and we are doing a tremendous amount of training. Our vector control programme over the last year has trained over 8 000 persons, so we are on a steep, steep educational pathway, because one of things we recognised within the population is that people need to understand the habits and behaviours of these vectors if they need to control them.
“So it is not [that]the Ministry of Health is no longer enforcing; yes we are enforcing, but in terms of the numbers of enforcement that you would see and compare it over say the last 25, 30, 40 years, it is not like that anymore. But we still continue to have issues where we have persistent non-compliance to the regulations, and in those instances we have to use the court of law to get some resolution to those issues.”
He stated that they have prosecuted one person so far this year, and had two instances where persons were prosecuted last year. These, he explained, included issues related to vector control as well as obstruction of duty. (JRT)
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