Tomorrow is Too Late

ONE week ago today, a five year old child died at the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital from symptoms related to dengue fever.  At the time of her death, officials at the hospital were moving people out of ward at the first sign of recovery because others were lined up to check in.   The numbers of cases of people reporting to the hospitals and clinics with symptoms that are common in patients with dengue fever have reached to the point where the authorities are now forced to say that there is an “outbreak” of dengue in Belize.

Where did it all begin? Where is the spread of the disease most noticeable?  Over the past few months, have the people in public health been collecting data on the number of cases at the clinics and hospitals?  How did they go from reporting 28 cases in one week and then announce an epidemic a few days later?  Do we have enough medicine to deal with the current situation?  Do we have a plan should it get worse?

Already Belizeans are getting uncomfortable with the situation; of course who can blame them when you consider all that has gone wrong in the Ministry of Health since the Barrow administration took office in February 2008.  There was the scandal over the fleecing at the KHMH where inferior drugs and over priced medicines were being bought.  Then there was the case of all the babies who were dying in the hospitals.  We have had trouble with management at just about every one of our regional hospitals.  Our health system is in a mess and we have a minister who is clueless.

In the months after those first deaths in Mexico as a result of the H1N1 virus (swine flu), the public health authorities reacted first with resolve, and then later seem to have run out of steam. While the epidemic never became as deadly as we initially feared, it exposed some serious shortcomings in our public health response, which is now being manifested.

According to the Web MD, Dengue fever is an acute viral disease that can last up to 10 days, but complete recovery can take as long as a month. Dengue fever is not contagious; the virus is transmitted to humans through mosquito bites, usually from the aedes aegypti (but frequently aedes albopictus) which bites during morning hours.

Last week the Belize Times was the first to predict that there was a dengue epidemic in Belize.  In this very same article, the writer asked whether the Public Health Department “paid any attention or conducted any studies to find out if the mosquitoes here in Belize have developed a resistance to malathion.” Studies have shown that in other places, the aedes aegypti mosquito developed a resistance to malathion, the substance that is sprayed to kill the larvae.

Before looking for answers to this question one has to ask whether the public health authorities have been spraying anything at all, for prior to the recent complaints on radio and television, there were no public announcements about spraying or any public campaign about dengue.

It is estimated that dengue kills about 20,000 people each year. As with most viral diseases, there is no vaccine to protect against the disease and no drug to cure it.

Dealing with what they now say is an outbreak is not an easy task, considering the complete lack of leadership from the minister of health and from the Barrow administration, but our public health department needs to become clearer about all the uncertainty when it comes to handling these kinds of situations.

Our children are currently on summer break, but soon school will start and the Ministry of Health will need to be figure out how to balance between infection control and the daily activities of schools.

Perhaps the time has come for the Prime Minister to take the advice of the Leader of the Opposition and fire Pablo Marin.  Tomorrow is already too late.

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