Health Ministry To Step Up Mosquito Eradication Activities In Portland

Minister of Health and Wellness, Dr. the Hon. Christopher Tufton, said that the Government will be ramping up activities to eradicate mosquito breeding sites in Portland.

“In the weeks to come, we are going to be deploying, in this parish, more vehicles for fogging, so you’re going to see new pickup trucks, vehicle-mounted foggers and we’re going to take on the fogging in a more aggressive way,” he said.

“We have ordered nearly 40 pickup trucks and vehicle-mounted foggers – the bigger ones in the back of the pickup trucks that can do multiple communities in one evening – and this parish is going to benefit from some of those vehicles to deal with the fogging throughout the parish,” he added.

Minister Tufton was speaking at a town hall meeting hosted by the Government at the Errol Flynn Marina in Port Antonio on Thursday (January 9), where he commended work done in the parish in 2019 to eradicate mosquito breeding sites and treat dengue cases.

He said that there was one confirmed death and more than 280 hospitalisations in the parish related to dengue.

He urged increased vigilance against the virus.

“Dengue, over the past year and a half, has been the worst it has ever been in the world, not in Jamaica alone… [and] in the Americas, dengue has been the most deadly,” Dr. Tufton said.

Mayor of Port Antonio, Councillor Paul Thompson, for his part, said the authorities will continue their fight against dengue.

“The focus on dengue is particularly appropriate at this time, and it requires consistent and effective individual and community efforts to prevent its reoccurrence and halt its spread,” he said.