EVERY day since December 1, teams of health workers deployed from the Kingston and St Andrew Health Department have been combing dozens of properties in the region with three words in mind: Search, treat, destroy.

Their main target has been the breeding sites of the Anopheles mosquito, which transmits malaria.

“We go into communities, especially in the affected areas, to literally search out for drainage, any water settlement anywhere to ensure that it is not breeding,” said Everton Baker, acting chief public health inspector at the Kingston and St Andrew Health Department.

In what needed to be a quick, massive and thorough response, the KSA Health Department was put on full alert when it was announced that there was a malaria outbreak in Jamaica, concentrated in West Kingston.

“I was saying, ‘What is this?’ because I recognise now that it’s going to be a massive mobilisation,” Baker said.

“It was kind of frightening, because in my time, I haven’t seen, dealt with malaria,” said Baker, who has served the department for 25 years.

Malaria was eradicated in Jamaica in 1965.

“We speak of it in a historical kind of perspective, we know what it is, know exactly how to deal with it, we have all the protocols…but we have never been in the situation before,” he said.

Baker explained that the workers dip into the breeding sites of the mosquitoes – which can occur anywhere water settles, from an idle tyre to the foot of a broken pipe – count the number of dips and the number of eggs per dip, to determine if the site is low, medium or heavy breeding.

There are 11 teams of six to eight workers, which include staff from other health departments across the country. Each team carries out an average of 25 ‘search, treat, destroy’ operations in a three-hour period.

“We’ll normally do a quick fix – adding abate to ensure that the larva is killed…once you cover the thing, they can’t breathe because they need oxygen,” Baker explained.

“So we have to do that search geographically, from property to property, land to land – every entity within a geographic area, especially in the affected areas. So it takes a lot of energy and manpower,” Baker added.

Two weeks after the outbreak, Baker is impressed with his department’s handling of the situation so far.

“It has been an overwhelming response, it has been clinical and to the point, because where we saw that we lacked resources, we mobilised more people,” Baker said.

For the next couple of weeks, Baker said, operations will remain fast-paced. The department will continue to spray school compounds and markets, among other places. But, he said, things will not return to normal for at least another year, as the department will carry out a sustained programme to eradicate all Anopheles breeding sites.

“Once you’ve had the reintroduction of malaria, you’re going to have the odd case. We have the mosquitoes, so we have to be very proactive to ensure that we don’t have another outbreak,” he said.

The department’s job would have been made easier if there were piped water in all areas, cleaner drains and operational plans to be enacted immediately upon an outbreak.

“In some of the communities there is no piped water, so they have to use a standpipe down the road and they store it [the water],” which creates the environment for mosquito breeding.

“We went to one property and they had five drums teeming with mosquitoes and it was kind of a war to turn them over, because when you full it [the drum] again, in no time, the eggs are there,” Baker said.

The operational plans, Baker said, would be drafted by the Ministry of Health with the help of relevant expertise such as the public health inspectors, and passed down to the regional health authorities.

“When it comes to real crunch time, you realise people don’t know what to do, and that could be a factor,” Baker told a gathering of public health inspectors recently.

One of the major breeding sites discovered since the outbreak was a drain on Marcus Garvey Drive, near the border of Kingston and St Catherine.

Baker called for the island’s drains and roadways to be cleaned up, and stressed the importance of co-operation among agencies such as the National Solid Waste Management Authority, the National Water Commission and local community organisations in surveillance and cleaning activities.

“We have to as a country, we must clean up,” he said.

mccattyk@jamaicaobserver.com

Avoid mosquito breeding sites on your premises

. Punch holes in old containers or fill receptacles with earth

. Crush cans

. Drain excess water from saucers of potted plants

. Use discarded tyres for backyard gardening or cut them

. Check property for broken pipes

. Check refrigerator tray for settling water

. Scrub clean feeding containers for pets

. Clean fountains and swimming pools