There is an acute viral problem

The Medical Professionals Association of TT (MPATT) on Thursday provided figures from a laboratory in south Trinidad to support the view that there is a problem with an unidentified virus as well as dengue. MPATT was responding to Health Minister Colm Imbert’s assertion of a political motive behind reports of a high number of suspected dengue cases at San Fernando General Hospital. In a statement last Thursday, MPATT referred to a major laboratory in San Fernando that received 192 blood samples for testing for patients suspected of having dengue fever. While 81 were positive for acute virus infection and 42 of them exhibited profiles supporting previous dengue infection, there were 111 cases whose cause of illness was not determined. “The vast majority were jaundiced and bedridden.”

MPATT said the data was from one of at least ten labs in South and did not include all the data from all labs from January to the present. The Association questioned the level of political maturity over the decades when this country has been “dithering with other matters while dengue has been marching into our bedrooms.” TT experienced a dengue epidemic in 1981 involving strains I, II, IV. Type III appeared in the US in 1983, and in 1986, the first case of dengue haemorrhagic fever was reported in St Lucia. TT’s first case was documented in 1992. “We have the Aedes aegypti mosquito transmitting both dengue and yellow fever, and aedes albopictus transmitting dengue,” MPATT said. According to “official” statistics for 2000, this country has 91 percent coverage for yellow fever. However, MPATT said the last WHO coverage survey in 1986 found only 48 percent of the population was adequately protected against yellow fever.