KSAC deploys health volunteers in Chic V-affected communities
THIRTY-ONE public health trained volunteers have been deployed to offer assistance to residents in Kyntire in east rural St Andrew and Burgher Gully in eastern Kingston — the two comunities from which the St Andrew Public Health Department has received the highest number of reported cases of the painful chikungunya virus.
The disclosure was made by deputy mayor of Kingston, Andrew Swaby, at Tuesday’s monthly meeting of the KSAC at its Church Street headquarters in downtown Kingston.
He told the council that over the next three weeks, the Public Health Department would assist the KSAC to train an additional 25 individuals weekly to help communities.
“The volunteers will work in groups and engage community members in eliminating breeding sites, promoting personal care, and create public awareness by the distribution of flyers,” Swaby said.
He said that on September 15, Mayor Angella Brown Burke met with the Public Health Department, councillors and the National Solid Waste Management Authority (NSWMA) to discuss the overall cleaning of the municipality as a means of aiding the council’s efforts towards mitigating against the Chic V.
The September monthend report of the Public Health Department disclosed that, to minimise the spread of the Chic V virus, critical areas across the municipality had been treated through inspection, assessment and fogging. He said that 251 communities were fogged and that a total of 5,042 containers were inspected. Of the containers inspected, 1,173 were found to be positive breeding sites for the aegis aegypti mosquitoes that carry the Chip V virus, he said.
Swaby said that since the Chic V outbreak, the KSAC had activated its Parish Emergency Operations Centre in collaboration with the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency management.
He said that under the guidance of the mayor, the KSAC had also been actively engaging the ministries of health, local government and community develoment, transport and works, the Social DEvelopkment Commission as well as ODPEM.
— Claudienne Edwards
