OPPOSITION Spokes-man on Health Dr Kenneth Baugh says that there is now a “full-blown chikungunya epidemic” in Jamaica, as in the rest of the Caribbean.

However, he said that Jamaica’s health sector’s capacity to deal with the breakout of the disease has been badly impaired by its current economic policy, as well as the poor response to the crisis from the Ministry of Health.

Speaking at a Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) press conference on health and the economy, at its Belmont Road headquarters in Kingston, yesterday, Dr Baugh said that the social consequences of the severe austerity programme appears to have compromised the Ministry of Health’s ability to respond meaningfully to the emergency.

“We always have to make provisions (for this) because, from time to time, especially at this time of the year, there always can be crises,” Dr Baugh said.

He said that the resulting immobility of public health staff, uncollected garbage facilitating additional breeding sites for mosquitoes and the lack of surveillance activities have made the epidemic less controllable.

Opposition Spokesman on Finance and Planning Audley Shaw, at the same time, said that the situation has seriously worsened because the $7-billion debt arrears that the Ministry of Health has built up was affecting its ability to stock its drug windows at hospitals with the appropriate drugs.

According to Dr Baugh, all the doubts raised by the Government in response to the Opposition’s complaints about the uncontrolled spread of chikungunya in Jamaica have now been erased. He accused the Government of being arrogant and out of touch with reality on the ground.

“The Ministry of Health has been delinquent in its response, and this may be due to the low incidence of fatalities. They have been intransigient and they have not responded very well,” Baugh said.

“I have not heard anything to give me the confidence that surveillance is taking place as it should, in terms of the mosquito-breeding sites and the kinds of mosquitoes that are there,” Baugh stated.

He lamented that there were no daily or weekly reports, and no response to his queries about the level of the mosquito resistance to fogging and other control measures being used.

He said that the Government should intensify its mosquito-control efforts, and secure its borders, ports and airports against the importation of the disease.

“It should be a regional effort, with a regional surveillance programme to look at the pattern of diseases,” the Opposition spokesman suggested.