Guyana Breaths a sign of relief as Dengue cases begin to decrease

The Caribbean nation of Guyana has been under the yoke of Dengue for months now, with a steady rise in cases and deaths. The good news is that the surge has started easing up according to the Health Minister Dr. Frank Anthony.

For this particular year, 2100 cases of infection were recorded and 11 lives have been lost up till this point.

The World Health Organisation also issued a statement saying that across the Americas, over 3 million cases have been recorded and attributed these issues to climate change creating favorable conditions for mosquitos to procreate at an alarming rate.

The Health Ministry in Guyana has taken a very direct tact to deal with the problem according to the Health Minister Dr. Frank Anthony. He explained that the Ministry was aiming at eliminating adult mosquitos as well as larvae.

In his statement he explained, “We did a lot of work on fogging which means that we are killing a lot of the adult mosquitos that’s the main vector for transmission and we also did a lot of work in killing the larvae.”

He also went on to praise the medical service personnel working tirelessly and the distribution of test kits to all regions, enabling easy and early detection of cases. According to him, this had enabled medical personnel to treat patients a lot quicker and decreased the time that the disease had to act on a patient. This in turn had saved many lives and helped reverse the tide of rising cases and deaths.

The nation has been dealing with this problem for a few months now and the issue became serious in August. This had prompted the Health Minister Dr. Frank Anthony, to set up a Technical Working Group at that point, to mitigate the effects of the outbreak.

In a statement in August, the Health Minister had said, “Considering this disease does not have a cure, medication and medical supplies have been distributed in adequate quantity to all regions to ensure symptomatic treatment of all patients throughout the health care system in keeping with a revised national treatment guideline.”

The Ministry of Health also started taking steps at that point to keep mosquitos from breeding near schools, home, hospitals or mines.

Considering the impact that such an epidemic can have on a community, it is good to see that the Ministry of Health managed to take the appropriate steps, under the guidance of Dr. Frank Anthony, to counter the surge and control the problem. As a result, the dengue epidemic finally seems to be regressing in the nation of Guyana which brings great relief to many. Having said that, the battle hasn’t been won yet and there could still be a long way to go.