Dear Editor,

If the Medical Association of Jamaica President Dr Myrton Smith is correct in his assertion that the message of the Ministry of Health’s anti-Zika virus public education campaign is being met with widespread resistance, then it seems to me that the Government will have to tweak urgently its current communication strategy to embolden the existing campaign.

The anti-Zika virus campaign now underway is designed to minimise the virus’s debilitating effects on the general population by passionately imploring Jamaicans of all walks of life to adequately and seriously prepare for the eventual arrival in the island of the distressing — if not fatal — viral menace.

But the campaign must take a new turn within the time we have for its full-scale arrival if the state apparatus hopes to succeed in breaking down to any appreciable degree, any vestiges of the wall of cynicism to the very sensible and pro-active message of its anti-Zika virus campaign.

It is prudent that the Government declares almost immediately a national anti-ZIKV clean-up day that focuses more intensely on awareness, information (especially where the issue of the danger of exposure to microcephaly by newborns is concerned), and action in respect of the dangers posed by the virus to the health and well being of the population.

Homes, factories, cookshops, garages, warehouses, schools, government buildings, residents of urban and rural conurbations, our cultural artistes, those living on gully banks and in tenement yards, car wash establishments, etc, must now be mobilised in one great national effort to search for, and destroy, all mosquito-breeding sites — especially in deep rural areas — while cleaning up public and private spaces.

Billboards advertising alcohol, cars, calorie starved and expensively dressed women, and more, must come down and be replaced by those with the anti-ZIKV campaign message. And, in all of this, the army must make its presence felt alongside the patriotic ZIKV monitors spread throughout the island.

Our parish councils, in targeting high risk communities along with a number of private sector entities, are doing a good job in the current campaign that is seeking to rid targeted human settlements of mosquito-breeding sites.

But, given our cultural habit of cynicism, much more will have to be done urgently if the economy and society are not to suffer unwelcomed debilitating pain and economic haemorrhage after the great sacrifice of our people in the last four years to deliver growth, investment, and stability to the economy.

Everton Pryce

epryce9@gmail.com