Penal Debe Regional Corporation (PDRC) chairman Gowtam Maharaj believes expert agencies need to step up and help combat dengue in rural areas.
His comments came as he said Minister of Health Terrence Deyalsingh's repeated advice for people to clean up around their homes would not suffice for rural communities. Maharaj said there were many properties within his district which were once used for farming and created a perfect breeding ground for the insects.
"You have to understand things in a context. When rice-growing was there, you would have had the farmers doing a bit of spraying and so on, you would have had the drains and so on. Now, that has gone. Now they are water-catchment areas. They are lying shallow. We need to have a programme. With climate change and with warmer temperatures, it's ideal for these things.
"Some particular agency, whether it's UWI (the University of the West Indies) or Ministry of Agriculture extension office if they are to be topped up with experts from wherever...have to come and look at those things and pronounce. Things are not happening by guess. They are happening as a result of other things."
Maharaj said state bodies needed to make an active effort to combat the transmission of dengue. He dismissed the idea that regional corporations ought to be the forefront agency in combating dengue spread.
He said the Ministry of Health's Insect Vector Control Division (IVCD) was supposed to take the lead and be supported by local-government bodies, but that was not happening.
"There is a serious breakdown of the collaborative effort, which is an international best practice, in handling what may be an outbreak."
He said although the IVCD is better equipped to handle mosquito eradication, its presence had been lacking on the ground.
He said the health agencies also shared little to no information with the regional corporation to help guide its approach to combating the disease.
"The collaboration needs to begin ASAP (as soon as possible) so we can be guided properly.
"They (IVCD) have the competency, and whilst we are using manpower and so on here, we want this to be an integrated insect-vector-control programme. That is how the best practice is in the international front."
To guide its efforts, Maharaj said the corporation depended on word-of-mouth reports. He said such anecdotal reports pointed to 11 cases in a short trace off of Rochard Road, Penal, with one person warded in ICU.
Maharaj, however, shared Deyalsingh's view that simply spraying for the mosquitoes was not the solution. While he said it was necessary in the short term, he said a more comprehensive approach was needed and would require infrastructure development.
He said, however, the corporation had not received any of its budgetary allocation for it to perform road and drainage development.
Similarly, chairman of the Princes Town Regional Corporation Gowrie Roopnarine called for the Government to provide more funding to combat dengue which he described as a "health crisis."
In a statement on Mon
