A total of 119 Dengue Fever cases have been recorded in St. Vincent and the Grenadines so far for the year 2024.
This was announced by the Ministry of Health, Wellness and the Environment’s Epidemiology Unit in an official release, where they noted that of those 119 cases, 23 were recorded in June and 82 recorded in July.
The Ministry in their release said that based on the epidemiological data, the number of lab confirmed cases of dengue fever has exceeded the threshold of the number expected indicating that there is a dengue fever outbreak in SVG.
The Ministry of Health is calling on all homeowners, community groups to search and destroy mosquito breeding sites or those with the potential to become breeding sites in and around your settings.
The Health Ministry, in an effort to combat the further spread of the virus has increased public awareness and health education interventions across SVG for various target groups; as well as increased surveillance including the use of GIS mapping for more targeted source reduction.
The Ministry has also strengthened its human resource capacity at the vector control unit with additional staff for source reduction and increased fogging exercise across St Vincent.
A private company has also been contracted to provide additional support to the vector control unit for fogging and source reduction in the Southern Grenadines.
According to the Ministry of Health, persons at risk of experiencing severe symptoms of Dengue Fever are children, pregnant women and the elderly especially those with limited mobility are asked to take extra precautionary measures as the virus can be deadly.
