Dengue mitigation needs a continuous process – Chief public health inspector

WESTERN BUREAU:

MICHAEL MYLES, president of the Jamaica Association of Public Health Inspectors (JAPHI), has cautioned against conflating the mitigation of the dengue virus with that of an event.

Myles, who spoke at the One Health, One Global Environment Conference held in Montego Bay on Monday, attributed the outbreak of dengue on the island in recent months in part to the extremely hot weather, including periodic rainfalls.

The Jamaica Association of Public Health Inspectors and the Americas Region of the International Federation of Environmental Health (IFEH) hosted the four-day conference at the Hilton Rose Hall Hotel.

“Yes, we have seen a great response from community members trying to clean up their environment, and we have seen initiatives .. by the Government in drain cleaning and school properties. However, dengue fever response cannot be an event; it is a process that requires continuous support from all sectors,” Myles said.

According to the chief advocate for JAPHI, all sectors must have a vector control budget, and a task force representing all disciplines is required to take decisive measures to prevent the breeding of mosquitoes around buildings and in communities on a continuous basis.

“Recycling companies need to be at the table; we all need to be connected and, on one accord, respond accordingly, creating a network for recycling to reduce tyre and breeding sites around the communities, so we can see a greater effort going forward,” Myles stressed.

Jamaica has experienced a protracted period of poor disposal and collection of garbage due to insufficient trucks in the fleet of the state-owned company, the National Solid Waste Management.

“Every cycle that we have breakdowns in the collection of solid waste, we have an outbreak. We have an outbreak in rodents, we see leptospirosis cases going up, and we see an increase in the number of dengue cases,” Myles noted.

He said serious consideration is now needed to ensure the proper disposal of solid waste and the timely collection of this waste from communities.

“The systems that we have must be consistent. Solid waste collection in the communities has to be timely in order to build the trust of the people to respond,” the JAPHI boss said.

Jamaica and the Caribbean, according to Maureen Lichtveld, dean of the School of Public Health at the University of Pittsburgh in the United States, should embrace the use of artificial intelligence to draw from a wealth of data about people, the environment, and their vulnerability in order to slow the spread of the dengue virus.

She argued that although there is an abundance of data on dengue, we do not appear to be utilising it effectively.

“We need to bring together data about people, data about the aedes aegypti mosquito, data about where the mosquito lives — the environment — and a particularly vulnerable population,” Lichtveld said in delivering the keynote address at the conference’s opening session.

“In perusing the data, she said, “We can use artificial intelligence to do predictive modulation so that we can anticipate and be ahead of mosquitoes and dengue. Therefore, we can focus on where to clean up in people’s backyards, where the mosquito grows, and where the people live who are more vulnerable, including schools and daycare centres.”