This brings the death toll to 17 in annual outbreaks in the last five years, in which 6 448 people became ill.

The news from senior medical officer Dr. Ronald Knight came as the Ministry of Health launched a renewed campaign to stamp out the Aedes aegypti mosquito which he said had become a "significant" problem since 1995.

The media campaign, designed by SOJE/Lonsdale based on research by Earle & Philips Consulting Group, will see a media advertising blitz, on radio, television, and in the newspaper, starting July 16 and running for three months.

Entitled It's Dengue, It's Deadly, Deal With It, the campaign will be telling Barbadians that dengue fever is caused by a bite from the Aedes aegypti mosquito.

Minister of Health Senator Phillip Goddard said research for this campaign showed Barbadians still did not understand this.

"Our research indicates that they understand that dengue is a problem, but they don't understand the linkage. There is not a visceral understanding that relates directly from the mosquito bite to dengue fever," Goddard told journalists yesterday.

"People have to understand that there is a direct linkage . . . and the solution to eliminating dengue fever is by eliminating the Aedes aegypti mosquito."

Knight said research also showed that people saw the mosquito as a nuisance, similar to a cockroach, but not as a carrier of a life-threatening disease.

The media campaign will portray the pain and agony experienced by dengue victims, and the aim of the campaign is to motivate householders to eliminate the disease by locating and eliminating breeding sites for the mosquito in and around their homes.

Education officer Denise Carter-Taylor said the campaign would also be taken to the communities and to the schools.