DEPUTY Mayor Patricia Chase-Green has disclosed that a schedule of fogging exercises to be done by the Georgetown Mayor and City Council (M&CC) would be made public soon.Chase-Green said these exercises will be conducted in collaboration with the Ministry of Health, especially as they relate to the latest virus to hit the Caribbean, Zika. “A schedule will have to be put out so that citizens in the various areas will be able to prepare.”
She said the M&CC’s Chief Medical Officer will have to engage the Chief Medical Officer of the Ministry of Health, so as to facilitate a collaborative approach. The council some time ago acquired its own fogging machine.
At the council’s most recent statutory meeting, Chase-Green had called for the Chief Medical Officer in the Ministry of Health to be contacted urgently, so that the council would know how best to protect the city from Zika.
Meanwhile, control of the Zika virus which is currently prevalent in countries of the Caribbean, is set to be targeted by Guyana’s Vector Control Unit (VCU). Head of the VCU, Dr. Reyaud Rahaman, has said that they will be increasing their efforts to prevent Zika from becoming an epidemic in Guyana.
“Technically we don’t want to put the population under risk by putting chemicals into the atmosphere and causing persons any harm, [we] have to be safe in what we’re doing,” Rahaman said.
In the meantime, he disclosed that they have sent out more staff to different high-density populations around the city. So far, the officers have been looking for breeding sites of mosquitoes and sensitising the public on what they should look out for, in terms of diseases. Zika apparently carries symptoms similar to Chikungunya.
Dr. Rahaman also disclosed that there will be a move to a new level from routine activities to a more holistic approach to tackling vector-borne diseases.