Woman may have returned with the fever
A Caymanian woman is suspected of contracting dengue fever after visiting the Bahamas.
Now Cayman is preparing to issue an advisory for travellers to the Bahamas, which is struggling with a dengue fever epidemic.
Cayman Islands Health Services Authority Medical Officer of Health Dr. Kiran Kumar said the Public Health Department would be warning people travelling to and from the island where about 1,000 cases have been reported since 1 August.
The alert comes as one patient in Cayman is suspected of contracting the disease while visiting the country earlier this month. If the case is confirmed, it will be first imported case of dengue reported this year in Cayman.
Eight other cases have been tested this year and all were found to be negative, Dr. Kumar said.
The private physician treating the woman is awaiting the result of laboratory tests, but the patient is “strongly suspected” to have contracted the illness, based on her travel history and her symptoms, Dr. Kumar said.
“Dengue is a reportable disease and when the public and private physicians suspect and test for dengue, they usually inform the Public Health Department. Oftentimes, the notification will also come from the laboratory as part of the surveillance protocol,” said Dr. Kumar.
The patient travelled to the Bahamas
and six days after returning to Cayman fell ill.
A family member of the patient, who the Caymanian Compass is not naming for privacy reasons, said she had been very sick and weak for about 10 days and that her doctor had said she likely had dengue.
All dengue samples coming to the Health Services Authority lab are sent overseas to the
Caribbean Epidemiology Centre, or CAREC, in Trinidad. The turnaround time for results is seven to 10 days, Dr. Kumar said.
He said that, once notified, the Public Health Department contacts the Department of Environmental Health and the Mosquito Research and Control Unit, which then spray insecticide in the vicinity of the patient’s home or workplace to kill mosquitos that might spread the disease.
The increasing numbers of people in the Bahamas with dengue and the higher than usual number of Americans returning from travelling there prompted the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention to issue a travel warning for US travellers last week about the outbreak.
Symptoms of dengue include high fever, rash, muscle and joint pain and pain behind the eyes.
As of 5 August, more than 890,000 cases have been reported to the Pan American Health Organisation this year, including 10,840 cases of sometimes fatal dengue haemorrhagic fever and/or dengue shock syndrome. The disease is widespread in Puerto Rico
and several countries across the region are reporting high incidence rates in addition to the Bahamas, including Brazil, Paraguay, Bolivia, and Aruba.
There is no vaccine to prevent the fever.
Alan Wheeler, assistant director of the Mosquito Research and Control Unit, said once a dengue case is suspected or confirmed, staff from the unit visit the home or business of the patient to spray the surrounding area. They target the female Aedes aegypti mosquito which spreads the disease from one human to another.
Although there are direct flights between the Bahamas and Cayman, the MRCU no longer sprays planes, Mr. Wheeler said. “We used to spray them before Hurricane Ivan. We had very low numbers then, but since then the numbers have risen,” he said, adding that to spray an aircraft is a four-man job and resources were better utilised using other approaches rather than “spraying to prevent one or two mosquitos coming in on an aircraft”.
However, the MRCU still sprays planes on Cayman Brac because that Island does not have the Aedes aegypti mosquito. “We don’t spray the plane while people are on it because some people have very strong reactions to insecticide,” he said.
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