‘Hundreds’ with virus symptoms

Shadow Minister of Health Dr Maria Agard believes many more Barbadians than reported may be coming down with the chikungunya virus and she has called on government ministers to treat the situation with a greater sense of urgency.

At a media conference called at the Opposition Barbados Labour Party offices in Parliament Buildings yesterday, Agard said while the Ministry of Health was reporting 40 confirmed cases, doctors were daily being confronted with “hundreds of suffering patients manifesting symptoms of the mosquito-borne viral infection”.

Shadow Minister of the Environment Senator Wilfred Abrahams who along with Opposition Member of Parliament Lieutenant Colonel Jeffrey Bostic was also present,  said many  people with symptoms chose not to pay the fee being charged for the test that confirms the chikungunya diagnosis. Abrahams said he believed this could be responsible for the lack of “accurate” figures representing the numbers stricken with the virus.

Agard said that while many people awaited formal confirmation of the illness, they were being rendered “virtually immobile by the crippling events of joint and muscle pains, headache, fever and internal bleeding” resulting in “the loss of hundreds of productive work hours.” (GC)

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