HEALTH Minister Dr Perry Gomez.
THE number of Zika cases in New Providence has increased to 11, Minister of Health Dr Perry Gomez confirmed yesterday.
According to health officials, the person in this latest case is a 46-year-old man who lives in southwest New Providence.
Confirmed Zika cases are expected to increase, as officials are awaiting test results from a regional lab regarding dozens of other suspected cases.
Last week it was announced that the Ministry of Health has allocated what would be a $30 million annual budget to tackle the spread of the virus.
Dr Glen Beneby, the chief medical officer, said the government had allocated some $2.5 million per month to combat Zika.
“When situations like this occur they go beyond sometimes what you would expect,” Dr Beneby said last week. “We had looked at doing upgrades to our services in the public health sector before this actually happened, and then on August 9 we got our first case.
“Once that happened we realised that we were going to have to do additional spending. We have teams in the Ministry of Health who were given the specific responsibility to review the situation, particularly in laboratory services, on the ground services and research, and they have developed the first budget.
“It (the budget) is in the region of $2.5 million (a) month. This is going to be subject to variation based on what we find. I would like to believe that we are going to be ahead of the curve, and things are going to be done in such a manner that we will not need any more; indeed, we will need less, but that is optimism.”
And in an effort to educate people about the virus, Minister of Environment Kenred Dorsett, member of Parliament for Southern Shores, recently facilitated a one-day training session with the Department of Environmental Health Services for teams from Southern Shores.
Teams of 25 began canvassing the Southern Shores constituency on Saturday to locate breeding grounds of the Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, remove them and educate area residents on how to protect themselves from contracting Zika.
The team consists of area male residents who were once unemployed.
Mr Dorsett said the team, over the next several weeks, will canvass the entire constituency starting with the elderly.
He said once the team gets permission from residents who want their property assessed, prevention team members will then begin “removing tyres, cleaning out yards and doing what we can to keep our community safe.”
“I believe that overcoming fears of Zika begins with us educating ourselves on the life cycle of the Aedes aegypti mosquito,” said Mr Dorsett in a press release.
“When we are familiarised with the breeding patterns we then know how best to stop the transmission of the virus from the Aedes aegypti mosquitoes and our fears are alleviated,” he added.
Zika, which has been linked to the birth defect microcephaly in newborn babies, can be transmitted through sex, however it is primarily spread through mosquito bites.
Residents are urged to clear their properties of items that can collect standing water, which are breeding grounds for mosquitoes. In order to avoid mosquito bites, the public is also advised to wear bug repellant and long sleeved clothing.
Comments
John 8 years, 3 months ago
Where are all the thousands of frogs that use to be on the islands? Remember as school boy during the rainy season every puddle of rainwater in the yard or on the side of the street would be filled with tadpoles. And the school boys would scoop them up by the hundreds and keep them. They would feed thenm (dead insects and lizzards) and watch them as they grow legs then lose their tails and eventually turn into small frogs. Then one day the boy would come home from school and find, most if not all the baby frogs were gone. They went hopping away in search of mosquitoes and other small insects. But then they would gather more after the next rain and repeat the process all over. Helping nature along. Frogs were not only a natural predator of the adult mosquito, but the tadpoles fed on insect lavae and so they naturally help to keep viruses like Zika under control. Yes one still had to spray or light green bush during the really hot and rainy months, but weekly spraying will eventually create more problems that is will solve. Like the orange and yellow butterflies and the chimmey and the tobbacco dove..the frogs have disappeared, mostly.
Sickened 8 years, 3 months ago
The same can be said for the our middle class. Where are they all disappearing to? Soon they too will me a memory.
DrDean 8 years, 3 months ago
The Center for Disease Control has issued a travel advisory for the Bahamas because of our confirmed Zika cases and the assumption that we are in an epidemic. An epidemic is assumed because few of our population have had previous exposure to the Zika virus. Countries in Africa where Zika has been around for decades have a large percentage of their population immune to the virus due to previous infections, and thus are considered endemic regions. While sporadic infections will continue to occur, they will not reach epidemic proportions until and unless a sufficiently large enough unexposed population is present to trigger another epidemic. That is one of the reasons we see cyclical Dengue epidemics (Dengue is more complicated because there are four serotypes). Previous experience with Epidemic Zika and other mosquito borne illnesses such as Dengue and Chikungunya have shown that these epidemics infect 25-65% of a denovo population. There is no value at this point in counting individual occurrences. It can safely be assumed that thousands have or will be infected during this current cycle. Vector control is appropriate. Because of the potential disastrous effects on developing babies, the government should be encouraging women to delay pregnancy during this epidemic phase, and if at all possible for one year.
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