Mexico helps to swat Belize dengue problem
The dengue outbreak in the Cayo District has sparked concern countrywide and precautionary measures were implemented to control the illness. And our neighbours to the north have now stepped in to offer additional assistance to prevent further transmission of dengue in Belize. Secretary of Health in Quintana Roo, Juan Carlos Azueta Cardenas and the Mexican Ambassador to Belize Luis Manuel Lopez Moreno, met earlier this week with local Minister of Health, Pablo Marin. The fruit of that meeting is that a team of seventeen medical and vector control personnel as well as some much needed ULV machines were brought over from Mexico to begin control and preventative efforts at the epicenter of the outbreak in the Cayo District. Once the situation in that western district is under control, works will begin in the Belize, Corozal and Orange Walk Districts. The team, led by Senior Epidemiologist, Dr. Julio Cesar Gonzalez Aguilar, under a three week agreement in which the Quintana Roo Health Secretariat will be providing epidemiological, entomological and laboratory support as well as ULV spraying. Marin told us more…
Pablo Marin, Minister of Health
“Whenever there is any case of any virus or anything that we may need in case of an emergency, Mexico is immediately going to respond and the same thing we are going to do. This also will implement all information to be from one side to the next. What happen right now with the dengue, as soon as they saw that we had about three hundred cases that we thought it was and thirty percent of it that yes, it’s confirmed. They said you know what I think you need help immediately. So on Monday we started Felix Canto from Quintana Roo, he immediately stated that whatever Belize need, we’ll do it. Now because of that we have six vehicles, fogging vehicles that will go there in Belize. We’ll start in Cayo, which is the area that is more concentrated with the dengue, come to Belize and then come to the north. This is the first thing that we are doing right now. Mexico is providing six fogging machines, that is with their vehicle. They are helping us with nurses, doctors, epidemiologist, for them to do the testing with traps for us to catch the larva and the mosquito to know exactly what kind of mosquito they have and with the lab, as I said, for us to know also what kind of dengue there is in the country.”
There have been two hundred and forty clinically diagnosed cases of dengue reported this year; a hundred of ninety-eight of those were from May twenty-fourth to present. Even more alarming is that a hundred and sixty-nine of the infected persons hail from the Cayo District.
