Publication: Daily Nation
Paper Section And Page: 12
Paper Date: Mon, Jan 10, 2000
Byline: Janelle Walters
THE FACT that 98 per cent of the population is susceptible to Type 3 of the
dengue fever virus is of great concern to people within the health sector.
There are four types of dengue fever - Types 1, 2, 3 and 4. Type 3 has not occurred in Barbados for about 20 years.
However, between November 1998 and December 1999 there were some reported cases.
Area co-ordinator for Vector Control at Warrens Polyclinic, Maurice Gaskin, said Type 3 dengue might have been imported from Jamaica given that the first confirmed case of this type was a man who had recently visited Jamaica and returned to Barbados. He was diagnosed with the virus soon afterwards.
Gaskin said: "Barbadians have been exposed to Type 1, 2 and 4 for about 20 years and now we seem to be having cases of Type 3 and we do not have any immunity built up against it."
The age group that is most affected by dengue fever is the 15 to 55 age group. These people tend to make up the workforce and the fever is spread easily among them.
Gaskin said that although the number of reported cases was decreasing each year, more needed to be done to combat the virus.
Chief Medical Officer Beverly Miller said: "What we need to do now is have an educational programme.
"It is not about Government or the Ministry of Health. It is the people in the communities who need to work to change the problem."
She maintained that all the programmes which were launched to educate the public about dengue and getting rid of the Aedes Aegypti mosquito would be continued.
Miller added: "If we are going to lick this thing, we have to step up all the education programmes and that we are doing."
For 1999, out of some 600 reported cases of dengue, 140 of them were confirmed by the Caribbean Epidemiology Centre in Trinidad where blood tests were sent for diagnosis.
In 1998, 1 150 cases of dengue fever were reported and there were five reported deaths.