The number of Malaria Cases nears the 300 mark
updated @ 12:00 noon on February 02 2006
Worldtravelwatch.com, in a Malaria Update published on February 01st, 2007 cited unnamed Jamaica officials as announcing on January 25th that the Malaria Outbreak, the first in the country for 40 years, had ended. I thought that was an incredulous revelation since it was a well-established fact that as the testing of the blood slides – over 6,000 according to the Ministry of Health website – continued, more and more cases of the disease were being confirmed.
Obviously, the World Travel Watch was wrong as evidenced by a Jamaica Gleaner report published on Friday, February 02nd, in which the Ministry of Health gave a new figure of 278 confirmed Malaria cases, 91 of which were identified last January month alone.
Granted, the rate of infection has slowed in the past few weeks. However, that does not signify that the outbreak has run its course. At the peak of the outbreak, there was a 5% positive reading. However, according to Dr. Sheila Campbell-Forrester, recently, the daily rate of infection was reduced to a 3% positive reading for all slides. She went on to say that “our daily positive rate has been reduced to less than 1%.”
Thus, the number of malaria cases is still on the rise in Jamaica. Radiojamaica.com reported on Saturday, January 20 that the total number of infected cases was up to 248. Then the jamaicaobserver.com, in an article entitled “Malaria Hits Greenwich Town” published online Wednesday, January 24 and citing Minister of Information and Development Donald Buchanan, made the startling announcement that the Malaria Outbreak had spread from the originally affected areas of Trench Town, Denham Town, Tivoli Gardens and Delacree Park to Greenwich Town and Clarendon.
Greenwich Town, situated in South West St. Andrew, had seen a major upsurge in Malaria infections, which was traced to the Malaria hotspots in Kingston and St. Catherine. One case was also identified in Clarendon.
Meanwhile, four Cubans including a Medical Entomologist and a parasitologist joined the Vector Control teams on the field to fight the Malaria Outbreak. Two technologists were assisting the local laboratories with the reading of blood smears.
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