MoH to distribute 200 fogging machines to NDCs – Dr Anthony

– as over 10,000 dengue cases recorded in 2024

In a bid to reduce mosquito infestations and also tackle several mosquito-related illnesses such as dengue fever and malaria, the Health Ministry will roll out a new initiative which will see every Neighborhood Democratic Council (NDC) in Guyana being equipped with its own fogging machine.
This new initiative was revealed by subject Minister Dr Frank Anthony during his Ministry’s year-end press briefing last week during which he added that NDCs across the country rely on the Health Ministry for fogging services.
“We will roll out a new programme where every NDC and every village council would get from us these fogging machines… I think we are buying close to 200 and something fogging machines.”
To fully maximise the effectiveness of this initiative, the Minister explained that the Ministry will also train personnel to properly use the machines.
“We will train them how to do fogging right now the NDCs and so forth rely on the Ministry vector-borne team to go out to do the fogging so what we want to do is decentralise that and train people how to do it.”
With the implementation of this initiative, it is hoped that dengue, malaria and filaria cases will decrease significantly. As it relates to stats on these diseases the Minister highlighted that last year Guyana recorded some 10,000 dengue cases.
“Dengue cases this year (2024), we have diagnosed about 10,000 persons with dengue and of those 10,000 persons I don’t have a number for hospitalisation and I don’t think we have had any deaths.”
Dr Anthony further stated that the Ministry has made significant strides as it relates to dengue testing with all regional hospitals being capable of doing tests.
“With dengue one of the interventions that we have put in place, we have better diagnostics available so all of our regional hospitals we now have capabilities of doing the dengue tests so they don’t have to send centrally.”
Notably last year, Guyana recorded over 24,000 cases of malaria, the Minister noted that in a bid to combat this scourge, the Ministry ramped up its net distribution campaign with over 100,000 nets being distributed in various communities across the country.
“We have been doing a lot more work in malaria, we have been able to diagnose this year (2024) 24,169 cases. We have distributed 109,523 mosquito nets; we have done more rapid tests and we have been working very closely with miners across the country so that we can train them.”
Moreover, he related that the Ministry in collaboration with the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO) has been working to eliminate several diseases with malaria being one of the main focus areas under this collaboration.
Meanwhile, as it relates to filaria the Minister noted that the Ministry has seen significant success in the fight against this disease, with no cases being recorded in eight administrative regions.
“In terms of filaria we have already eliminated filaria from eight of our 10 regions. As you know, this was a big problem in our country. But we have now eliminated this from eight of our 10 regions. We have a problem in Regions Four and Three. And earlier this year, we introduced mass drug administration for these two regions.”
Through the mass drug administration campaign, the Minister noted that a significant decline in filaria cases in these two remaining regions is expected this year.