High-risk areas for mosquito checks

Chief Environmental Health Officer, Tyrone Applewhaite, said his department was intensifying its efforts to combat the Aedes aegypti mosquito by doing inspections in high-risk areas in addition to conducting weekend inspections.
Speaking at a Press Briefing at the Ministry of Health’s Culloden Road, St Michael headquarters yesterday, he lamented that one of the major hindrances in their daily duties was the inability to gain access to some properties because people were at work.
Applewhaite said this amounted to as many as 60 per cent of homes being closed in certain areas, but in general the average was about 30 per cent. Additionally, the rate on weekends was approximately 24 per cent, he noted.
He disclosed that officers in the Environmental Health Department were in the process of developing “a card” that would assist them in getting in contact with the owners of these closed houses.
“We must agree that if there is a high level of mosquito breeding in a general area, we can also assume that those closed houses are also breeding mosquitoes,” he stated.
The Department will be embarking on an initiative dubbed the Vector Free Schools Programme from this week where they will be meeting with principals of public and private primary and secondary schools in an effort to develop a framework for mosquito control. (BGIS)