OPPOSITION Leader Bruce Golding says funding should not be an issue when it comes to dealing with the malaria outbreak. He was commenting on the additional $58.4 million that the government allocated to the anti-malaria programme on Monday. The government had initially injected $30 million into the programme, but increased the funds as the number of confirmed cases grew.

“I think that [funding] is an absolute priority now, and if more [money] is needed, more needs to come,” Golding told the Observer on Tuesday at a senior citizens treat at the Tivoli Gardens Community Centre in West Kingston.

“Whatever we need to do, resources must not be the problem, which is why I have been so impatient with the time it is taking for the samples to be read because if it is necessary to find labs wherever there are… and if we don’t have enough people to read them, ship them out and get that diagnosis done as quickly as possible,” the opposition leader said.

“If one good thing can come out of the malaria outbreak,” he continued, “it would be a sensitisation on the part of the government with cleaning drains and gullies”.

Added Golding: “the cleaning up the communities cannot be something that you do only in response to an epidemic. It is something that must be done on a regular and sustained basis and, hopefully, we would have learnt something from it and we won’t allow this sort of pile up to take place again.”

However, the Ministry of Health said on Tuesday that approximately half of the people who have been diagnosed with malaria have already been successfully treated.

Meanwhile, councillors for two of the communities that have been affected by the malaria outbreak said they have been doing their part to assist health officials by ensuring that the outbreak is kept under control.

“We have been working with them [Health Ministry] assiduously,” said Kingston Mayor and Councillor Desmond McKenzie (JLP-Tivoli Gardens Division). “We have assigned individuals at every beck and call. We are doing our best. We have cleaned up some areas, and we are continuing in that exercise and we are hoping that this thing will start to relax and leave us,” McKenzie added.

The mayor also noted that extensive cleaning has been done in communities where malaria cases were initially identified.

Councillor Lorna Leslie (JLP-Denham Town Division) said the situation involving a manhole that had overflowed has now been fixed. The residents had expressed concern that sewage coming out the manhole would be the perfect breeding site for the anopheles mosquitoes, which carry the malaria parasite. Leslie noted too, that the KSAC has been re-cleaning several manholes and drains in the area.

Additionally, Leslie said that she has been monitoring the people who have been identified as having malaria in her division.

“We got a list from the public health authority pointing out some persons who were suppose come and take their medication,” she said. “What I did was go around with the list and call them out and advise them to go and get the medication for three days,” Leslie said.