Maroc - NEWSDAY.CO.TT - A la Une - 14/Jul 07:37

Staying alive in Trinidad and Tobago

It is not the intensifying gang violence and three-murders-a-day alone that make TT such a frontier town, it is how inured we are to the deadly challenges we face. The public outcry over two deaths, already, from dengue and the certainty of others to follow, is loud in its non-existence. I lost a friend in Colombia a few months ago from dengue – he was only in his thirties. People who have been unfortunate enough to have had dengue relate what a bone-crushing disease it is. A friend with a congenital heart condition had to abandon the tropics in case she had a third infection. Doctors warned she would die. Citizens are being threatened with the possibility of a large fine ($3,500) if found to be harbouring on their property the larvae of the Aedes egypti mosquito, which spreads dengue, chikungunya, Zika and yellow fever. That is all well and good, because we like punishing people when they err, but what are the responsibilities of the authorities? The citizen can only do his/her best in what they control, not in neighbouring areas that are under local and central government jurisdiction and are breeding grounds for the lethal pest. Running along the entire perimeter of one side of my home is a storm drain that is in such a bad state of repair that large pools of stagnant water deeply pockmark its surface all year long. Complaints, enquiries, requests have been ignored for years. Every few months the San Juan/Laventille Regional Corporation sends some workers at dawn to hack off the ever taller and stronger bushes that grow between the increasingly porous mortar of the walls that form the high sides of the drain. The vegetation is almost certainly weakening the structure. The corporation ignores that as well as the mosquito breeding grounds below. Intermittently, at dawn, a vehicle of some sort drives along the street and blasts a strong-smelling mosquito-killer spray into the air. It claws at the throat and rouses us from sleep, but how far the spray travels to the back of our premises is dubious. Its efficacy at killing mosquito larvae is also dubious, because, excluding the fact that the more the substance is used, the greater the resistance mosquitoes develop to it, some experts argue that the spraying method settles the poison on surfaces and does not penetrate deep down through all the vegetation to where the larvae are living. Spraying happened last week, in the middle of the day, unexpectedly settling poison on uncovered human and pet food and water. The public should be reassured about the ill-effects of inhaling and ingesting that poison. Once a year, maybe, a couple of individuals from the health department come around to do an inspection of our premises. Once I saw them drop some small grey pellets into my bromeliads in the garden. That is what is needed to do the job properly, apparently, but citizens are not allowed to have them and are not allowed even to know the name of the substance that has replaced them. How sensible is that? It adds up to a typical case of poor but high-handed administration, poor governance and a blind disregard for the health of citizens or the service they might expect, especially with a dengue threat hanging over us. My property-tax valuation has finally arrived, and it is a high rating. I agree to paying the tax, because I consider it a contribution to the many services afforded to residents, but the service I would most value is that the San Juan/Laventille Regional Corporation fixes that drain and rids us of the mosquitoes that make our daily lives a misery. Until then there is little sense in taking any more precautions other than the usual cleaning of guttering weekly and twice-weekly weeding out any stagnating water, while constantly living in a mosquito heaven. I suppose I would stand the chance of facing the wrath of the state if I withheld my tax contribution until I saw the value of making it. The recent PAHO report into the death of newborns in the NICU unit at the Port of Spain General Hospital that has been hotly contested by our Minister of Health should give us pause for deep thought. It found a string of issues that tell of very poor administration where only the very best practice should be expected. The bereaved parents all complained of poor attitude by the nursing staff, which many frontline users of state healthcare can attest to, but the report proves that wherever bad attitude and poor results exist, it is always down to poor management. The investigators found overcrowding, nursing shortages, sub-standard infection control, inadequate ratio of equipment for the needs of the nursing staff, improper use of personal protective equipment and more. It is alarming because while it is political, in that it relates to the allocation of state resources, the deaths are profoundly about how all our services are managed, the prevailing culture and the pressures that render them unfit for purpose and leave citizens vulnerable. The post Staying alive in Trinidad and Tobago appeared first on Trinidad and Tobago Newsday.