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Com­ing off a dead­ly year of dengue fever out­breaks, Min­is­ter of Health Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe has as­sured the pub­lic that all chem­i­cals, equip­ment and ma­chin­ery re­quired for mos­qui­to erad­i­ca­tion are avail­able.

Speak­ing at the Min­istry of Health’s Mos­qui­to Aware­ness Week cam­paign at Gulf City Mall, La Ro­main, Bo­doe iden­ti­fied pub­lic aware­ness as the biggest chal­lenge in curb­ing the spread of dengue. Ear­li­er this week, he and Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Health, Dr Rishad Seecha­ran, toured the In­sect Vec­tor Con­trol Di­vi­sion to as­sess readi­ness. While ac­knowl­edg­ing that the sys­tem is not per­fect, Bo­doe said steps will be tak­en to ad­dress ex­ist­ing is­sues.

Re­call­ing the 19 con­firmed dengue-re­lat­ed deaths in 2024—in­clud­ing the case of an eight-year-old girl who was dis­charged from a health cen­tre with­out med­ica­tion—Bo­doe stressed that doc­tors at these fa­cil­i­ties are the first point of care. He said they are trained to recog­nise symp­toms and are tak­ing ad­di­tion­al pre­cau­tions.