Guyana enhances vector control with CARPHA’s support to digitalise surveillance

The time for recording vector control information on a piece of paper to be processed will be a thing of the past, as the Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA) offers support to Guyana on digitalising surveillance and offering data instantaneously on the risks of transmission.
Just recently, Guyana recorded spikes in dengue cases which are being combatted with efforts to prevent infections.
This week’s edition of the Health Matters Programme zeroed in on vector-borne diseases, where Head of the Medical Entomology Unit, Crystal Crawford shared that integrated vector management is being used to conduct inspections and educate the public on ways to eliminate breeding sites for mosquitoes.
CARPHA is training stakeholders on how to utilise Geographic Information System (GIS) to avoid human errors associated with manual records, and increase efficiency.
“We go out in the field and record our data on paper but GIS now incorporates the use of gadgets. Now, our data can be more streamlined, and more accurate because we can have human error using paper. We can then do mapping and all of these things so we are grateful to CARPHA and colleagues for coming on board and helping us,” Crawford explained.
The most common arboviral disease in Guyana is dengue but cases of zika and chikungunya also exist. While there is no cure for dengue, patients are treated based on symptoms.
She noted that persons can make their environment safe by ensuring that there are no breeding sites for mosquitoes. This can be a bucket of water, coconut shells or any medium for mosquitoes to lay their eggs.
Head of Vector-Borne Diseases from the Caribbean Public Health Agency, Rajesh Ragoo underlined that both the epidemiological and entomological sides are critical in vector surveillance. One of the expected outcomes of the GIS introduction to Guyana is to strengthen surveillance techniques.
“We’re now at the point where we’ve started introducing some very exciting technology called Geographic Information Systems. That is in response to moving away from the traditional way of doing things, increasing efficiency in the field, and increasing vector control efforts against arboviral disease transmissions and mosquito-borne transmissions,” said the CARPHA official.
This support is being rolled out to all member states. While persons might be familiar with inspections conducting site visits manually, it takes a while for the information to then be entered into the respective software to be analysed.
However, Ragoo explained, “What we’re doing is eliminating this lag time from collecting the data in the field to actually collecting the information to respond to a particular area. What the GIS does is quickly captures and calculate on the fly so we get information very quickly. We’re able to determine the risk of transmission in a particular area and map where mosquitoes are breeding, the types of containers where they’re found, infestation for different communities across a range of vectors.”
A few days ago, Region Six (East Berbice-Corentyne) Chairman David Armogan reported a semi-outbreak of dengue in the region. The health department in the region had recorded over 100 cases.
Dengue fever is an infection caused by one of four dengue viruses. They are related to each other, but they are not exactly the same. Getting sick from one dengue virus does not protect an individual from getting the others. A person can get dengue fever more than once. Dengue fever is spread by mosquitoes that carry dengue viruses.
The symptoms would usually last between five to seven days. Dengue symptoms include fever, headache, pain behind the eyes, joint and muscle pains, tiredness – sometimes for days to weeks, rash, stomach problems, nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, cough, sore throat, stuffy nose, small purple spots on the skin along with red-eye or swollen glands.