ONE thousand people have been trained, certified and temporarily employed as community vector control aides by the HEART Trust/NTA and the Ministry of Health to help tackle the Zika virus in Jamaica.

The vector control aides were certified having successfully completed an eight-week training programme, which is a part of the Ministry of Health’s response to the mosquito-borne disease.

Minister of Health Dr Christopher Tufton said that through the efforts of these vector control aides there has been a decline in the infection rate of Zika.

He added that the vector control aides have been instrumental in the distribution of educational material in communities islandwide by going house-to-house to speak with residents about mosquito breeding sites as well as engaging in house inspections.

Programme manager for the National Vector Control Programme and medical entomologist in the Ministry of Health, Sherine Huntley-Jones said that given the small number of permanent staff the minister has on hand, it was important for them to recruit these individuals.

“In the situation of an outbreak you want to increase the number of persons that you have on the ground taking action and implementing your interventions, hence why we went with the employment of these 1,000 persons,” Huntley-Jones said.

The HEART/NTA played an instrumental role in the process and provided training for the participants in the programme in classroom sessions that lasted eight full days followed by on-the-ground training in their various communities. They did in-course assessments, a final assessment in the form of a written exam and a field assessment.

Participants received an official certificate from HEART/NTA that will allow them to work as vector control aides in Jamaica and worldwide as certified vector control aides.

These individuals will, among other things, be responsible for clean-up of the communities, identifying and destroying mosquito breeding sites; distributing mosquito bed nets to pregnant households, and conducting community Zik-V surveys.

Dr Tufton said that the Ministry will continue to work with this batch of individuals as it does not only envision them working in or with vector control.

“These vector control aides will receive further training but they may not do vector control again, they may do something in nursing or something relating to the community health aid,” Tufton said.

The programme, which was initially slated to run for eight weeks, will be extended until February 2017.