MRCU using CUC meters to map inspections

DPO Garbeth Wright logs CUC meter

(CNS): A team of disease prevention officers (DPOs) from the Mosquito Research and Control Unit (MRCU) has begun residential inspections to collect data on where the dangerous Aedes aegypti mosquito is breeding. Officials said that the DPOs are inspecting the grounds of homes for containers, whether human-made, such as buckets, tyres and cisterns, or natural, like bromeliads and tree holes, and they will be scanning barcodes on CUC electric meters to identify the inspection sites.

In a press release about the initiative, described as “part of ongoing year-round efforts to combat” the mosquito species that can spread diseases like Zika, chikungunya and dengue, MRCU Director Jim McNelly said the teams will explain the process to householders in any yard they visit and the project will include the eastern districts.

To track information obtained from the visit, the DPOs are carrying tablets that they use to enter the number, type and location of containers. “This information is essential to MRCU’s surveillance and eradication programme,” officials stated in the release.

As part of this new upgraded system, the DPOs received training from the Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA) and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in the United States. Both entities have been advocating for the barcode system to be adopted throughout the Caribbean as part of efforts to share regional data on Aedes aegypti.

Health Minister Dwayne Seymour called for the public’s cooperation during the exercise, which he said was part of the MRCU’s integrated strategy to combat the growth and reproduction of the invasive species. Homeowners’ compliance during visits is essential, he added, to preventing a serious public health concern.

The data collection follows the departure of Oxitec and its controversial experiment in eradicating the Aedes aegypti using genetically modified mosquitoes. The MRCU has not yet given a full account of what led to the bio-tech company moving on after completing an experiment in West Bay.

It is also still not clear what new methods the MRCU intends to employ to control the species that the previous director had warned is now resistant to most of the insecticides it has used to control it in the past.