What will it take to get it right?

Apr 03, 2016 News

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By Sharmain Grainger
From all indications, simply asking some citizens to keep their environment free of very obvious breeding sites for mosquitoes is not enough to change an unhealthy culture. In fact it may very well take penalizing defaulters

to bring about a real culture change.
I premise the foregoing on reports that just last week the Vector Control Services Unit of the Ministry of Public Health was forced to dispatch a team to New Amsterdam, Berbice, to investigate what was causing an alarming increase of the mosquito population there. Residents were complaining of being swarmed by an unusual number of mosquitoes in broad daylight and well into the night.
This, of course, is the way the Aedes type mosquitoes operate. But to have increasing swarms in an area already known to have too many mosquitoes is a worrying development. This is especially since the Public Health Ministry has been struggling to keep at a minimum, the number of cases of the Zika Virus. The Zika Virus, as we all should know by now, is transmitted by the Aedes type mosquitoes.
The Ministry has admitted to six positive cases of the virus, but interestingly only one of the victims had a Berbice address. This is particularly interesting to me, since it seems that Berbice appears to be vying for the title of mosquito capital of the country.
It seems logical that more cases of the virus would have occurred in Berbice. I’m very curious about this, as the Minister of Public Health himself told me recently that while Brazil, our neighbour to the south, has reported alarming numbers of the virus, it was in fact in Suriname, which is closest to Berbice, that some of the victims (who tested positive) have had interactions.
He therefore concluded that Suriname is more of a worry for Guyana than Brazil.
“We are worried more about Suriname, because what we have learnt is that persons who have tested positive had some exposure to Suriname…so we are thinking the problem for us is Suriname and not Brazil really,” said Minister Norton.
Suriname is Guyana’s neighbour to the east.
In my opinion, persons with the symptoms of the Zika Virus in Berbice are probably not reporting their conditions to health facilities or are simply being treated for something else altogether.
But I am guilty of digressing. The real point of this article today is our discouraging approach to cleanliness here in Guyana.
I was privy to a discussion which followed after the vector control workers visited Berbice last week, and after the assessment it was the conclusion that “these people just nasty…” This I was made to understand, meant that instead of properly discarding a juice can in a bin, for instance, it was tossed onto the shoulders of the streets. Water accumulated in such a container was only one of the many breeding sites for mosquitoes observed.
I am by no means labelling all Berbicians with the “nasty” tag. And I am certainly not about to say all citizens of this country need to embrace a more hygienic culture.
This is in light of the fact that some people have already been desperately trying to keep their environment clean. Their efforts, however, are being badly undermined by others, perhaps even deliberately so.
We all at some point might have witnessed these defiant culprits in action. Some simply don’t care and therefore still opt to toss their food boxes and soda cans on the roadside rather than keep them until they find a bin or other waste receptacle.
Just last week I witnessed the appalling action of someone throwing garbage out of the window of a moving vehicle. I wished that there was something I could have done to make that person see what a horrific act that was.
Maybe, just maybe, the relevant authority could put in place a hotline that people can call when they witness such actions; I would have been happy to report the number of the vehicle from which the waste items were thrown.
For some, I believe, keeping the country clean is just a facade that will eventually disappear.
I say this because far too often we see a well cleaned area, within a matter of days of being cleaned, become overwhelmed with garbage as if persons simply don’t care about cleanliness.
It was shocking, although it shouldn’t have been, to witness the state of some of our country’s recreational grounds after kite flying on Easter Monday. I’m trying to embrace the theory that a whirlwind was responsible for emptying all the far too rammed bins causing piles of garbage to be strewn around in the most unsightly manner…but we all know that wasn’t the case.
We, as a nation, have got to discuss this cleanliness, or lack therefore, issue with a view to putting measures in place to improve our surroundings.

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