The Min­istry of Health (MOH) says it has in­ten­si­fied its sur­veil­lance and test­ing ef­forts in re­sponse to grow­ing glob­al con­cerns over Avian in­fluen­za (bird flu) fol­low­ing rec­om­men­da­tions from the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (WHO).

Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram, in a state­ment is­sued through the Min­istry’s Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions De­part­ment, con­firmed that while the WHO cur­rent­ly as­sess­es the risk to the gen­er­al pub­lic as low, the Health Min­istry re­mains vig­i­lant.

“As is cus­tom­ary with all virus­es of con­cern, the min­istry con­tin­ues to un­der­take sur­veil­lance and test­ing to de­tect any po­ten­tial cas­es and to proac­tive­ly pro­tect pub­lic health. Fo­cal points from the Min­istry of Health and the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, Land and Fish­eries are in reg­u­lar com­mu­ni­ca­tion, and there is en­hanced vig­i­lance for both an­i­mal and hu­man sur­veil­lance for clus­ters of un­usu­al ill­ness­es in poul­try, live­stock, or per­sons in con­tact with these sources,” Paras­ram said.

As the coun­try moves clos­er to the cli­max of the Car­ni­val sea­son, con­cerns have been raised about screen­ing mech­a­nisms for peo­ple en­ter­ing the coun­try. 

The Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer as­sured that sys­tems have been put in place, con­sis­tent with in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards un­der the In­ter­na­tion­al Health Reg­u­la­tions (IHR) (2005). He not­ed that any lab­o­ra­to­ry-con­firmed hu­man case of in­fluen­za caused by a new sub­type must be re­port­ed to the WHO with­in 24 hours.

The WHO has urged mem­ber states, in­clud­ing T&T, to in­crease sur­veil­lance, par­tic­u­lar­ly among oc­cu­pa­tion­al­ly ex­posed in­di­vid­u­als such as farm work­ers and those han­dling an­i­mals. The rec­om­men­da­tions in­clude ac­tive case find­ing, re­duc­ing en­vi­ron­men­tal ex­po­sures, and pro­vid­ing per­son­al pro­tec­tive equip­ment (PPE).

Health au­thor­i­ties have al­so been ad­vised to con­duct ge­net­ic se­quenc­ing of in­fluen­za virus­es, en­hance biose­cu­ri­ty in live­stock premis­es, and im­ple­ment pre­ven­tive mea­sures to break the chain of in­fec­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly in poul­try and dairy cat­tle.