EDITORIAL: Step up dengue fight
Recently, Barbados via its Ministry of Health and Wellness, has confirmed dengue-related deaths in the country. We have heard of an eight-year-old with a pre-existing health condition who passed away from the mosquito-borne illness recently and also another individual who did not have any predisposing conditions.
Minister of Health and Wellness, Lt. Col. Jeffrey Bostic has meanwhile sought to give the assurance that the relevant officials will be re-doubling their efforts to tackle dengue fever, which has raised its ugly head in Barbados again.
Now if we cast our minds back to just a few months ago, health officials in Barbados and other Eastern Caribbean countries were cautioned to scale up efforts to prevent the occurrence of severe dengue fever outbreaks in their countries, even as they focused on continuously battling the COVID-19 pandemic. The critical piece of advice came at the time from Dr. Yitades Gebre, PAHO/WHO Representative for Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean Countries. He was at the time delivering remarks during a webinar hosted by PAHO, focusing on the Dengue Response in the Midst of the COVID-19 Pandemic. The webinar provided a forum for sharing information on effective outbreak containment strategies for dengue, and how to build a sustainable response. During that session, Dr. Gebre stressed that policies, strategies and plans for dealing with both diseases at all levels of the health care delivery system, should have been given priority. It is now clearer than ever, why we can’t let our guard down and why we need to be all-encompassing.
In all fairness, the Government is trying to do its part and has apparently gone ahead and ordered hand-held mosquito foggers, vehicle-mounted foggers and hired contractors to identify breeding sites for mosquitoes and to eliminate them. However, the time has come for householders to also hold their share of the load, in preventing mosquito-borne diseases. Householders must be encouraged to work together in and around their homes, to get rid of stagnant water, reduce and dispose of solid waste, and to ensure proper covering of all water storage containers, in order to eliminate prime breeding sites for mosquitoes. Here in Barbados, we need to take progressive steps to ensure that we can keep the numbers down, where deaths from these mosquito-borne diseases are concerned.
More can certainly be done by Barbadians on a whole, to beef up their premises against an influx of mosquitoes and this starts by ensuring that mosquitoes do not get the chance to multiply. We can then take precaution against the dangerous Aedes aegypti mosquitoes in particular, that surface. Barbadians by now should also know the signs and symptoms of dengue fever and be on the lookout for mosquitoes as well as these key signs.
That said, we must also consider that the early recognition of persons with dengue fever is the first step in preventing the progression of the severity of the disease. Thus, the capacity of health care workers to deliver that first level of care in the diagnosis and appropriate management of dengue, needs to be enhanced, even in the midst of this present COVID-19 pandemic. Yes, COVID is a lot to battle with and even though we are preoccupied with reducing the spread of the virus given the rise in local cases of late, we still have to pay attention to other diseases and illnesses, in the interest of public health.