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Tuesday, July 8, 2025

Health Minister: No evidence of mosquito migration from Venezuela

by

15 days ago
20250623

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Health Min­is­ter Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe says there is no ev­i­dence that mos­qui­toes are mi­grat­ing from Venezuela to Trinidad, de­spite con­cerns raised by res­i­dents in Ica­cos about a surge in mos­qui­to ac­tiv­i­ty in the penin­su­la.

Res­i­dents in Ica­cos, Fullar­ton and Ce­dros have been grap­pling with un­usu­al­ly high mos­qui­to con­cen­tra­tions and are call­ing on au­thor­i­ties for im­me­di­ate as­sis­tance.

Re­spond­ing to the con­cerns, Dr Bo­doe said the Min­istry of Health will soon de­ploy the In­sect Vec­tor Con­trol Di­vi­sion (IVCD) to ad­dress the sit­u­a­tion.

“The IVCD will per­form per­i­fo­cal ac­tiv­i­ty which in­volves ver­i­fi­ca­tion of the re­ports and com­mu­ni­ty house­hold in­spec­tions to iden­ti­fy mos­qui­to breed­ing sites and de­stroy all ev­i­dence of breed­ing,” he ex­plained.

“Where high con­cen­tra­tions of adult mos­qui­toes are iden­ti­fied, the IVCD team will con­duct chem­i­cal spray­ing via truck-mount­ed ULV and hand-held ther­mal fog­ging us­ing an es­tab­lished sched­ule of treat­ment.”

Dr Bo­doe al­so ad­dressed spec­u­la­tion about mos­qui­toes cross­ing from Venezuela in­to Trinidad.

“We have no ev­i­dence to sug­gest a mi­gra­tion of mos­qui­toes from Venezuela to Trinidad,” he said.

“In any event, Trinidad is al­ready en­dem­ic to the mos­qui­to species re­spon­si­ble for spread­ing the com­mon mos­qui­to-borne dis­eases like dengue, chikun­gun­ya, zi­ka and malar­ia.”

Dr Bo­doe ac­knowl­edged that in­fect­ed mos­qui­toes could the­o­ret­i­cal­ly be trans­port­ed across the bor­der and cause lo­calised out­breaks, but said the health sys­tem is well-equipped to de­tect and man­age these risks.

“Dis­eases like dengue and chikun­gun­ya are rou­tine­ly mon­i­tored through our na­tion­al sur­veil­lance net­work,” he said.

He not­ed that the min­istry al­so em­ploys var­i­ous pre­ven­tive mea­sures, in­clud­ing mos­qui­to con­trol at all air­ports and health mon­i­tor­ing at of­fi­cial south­ern ports.

“At ports where trav­ellers from Venezuela ar­rive by boat, the IVCD con­ducts pas­sen­ger fever sur­veil­lance and ran­dom sam­pling for malar­ia iden­ti­fi­ca­tion,” he said.

Dr Bo­doe added that pub­lic health teams are on alert for signs of mos­qui­to-borne ill­ness.

“The Min­istry of Health, through its na­tion­al sur­veil­lance net­work, mon­i­tors health fa­cil­i­ties for sus­pect­ed cas­es with a high in­dex of sus­pi­cion for po­ten­tial malar­ia cas­es,” he ex­plained.

On Wednes­day, res­i­dents urged the au­thor­i­ties to ini­ti­ate ex­tend­ed hours at the Ce­dros and Ica­cos Health Cen­tres due to the mos­qui­to in­fes­ta­tion.

In Gran Chemin Road, Ica­cos, res­i­dent Cal­lis­ton Grant said the mos­qui­to prob­lem has been on­go­ing for sev­er­al years, wors­en­ing af­ter rain when mos­qui­toes hatch. He said spray­ing should ex­tend deep­er in­to the bush­es, about 10 feet up, to help con­trol the prob­lem. Show­ing bite marks on his hand, he not­ed that while some peo­ple use re­pel­lent, many pre­fer to stay in­doors af­ter dark.

In Fullar­ton, Steve Coop­er al­so called for more spray­ing, point­ing out that many breed­ing ar­eas need to be treat­ed with malathion to stop mos­qui­toes from mul­ti­ply­ing.

Ce­dros coun­cil­lor Shankar Teelucks­ingh con­firmed re­ports of in­creased mos­qui­toes in Ce­dros, Ica­cos, Fullar­ton, and Bonasse, not­ing that the rainy sea­son brings a rise in mos­qui­to num­bers.

He said both the Min­istry of Health and the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion were work­ing to­geth­er to bring re­lief.


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