PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad - The fight against dengue, which is spread by the Aedes Egypti mosquito, costs the Caribbean a whopping US$321 million per annum. Prof Christine Carrington revealed this figure in her professorial inaugural lecture at Noor Hassanali auditorium, Faculty of Law, St Augustine Campus, on Thursday. Among those present were Prof Dean Ramsewak, Dean, Faculty of Medical Sciences, and PhD student (Molecular Genetics) Orchid Allicock.
Its theme was Dengue: Past, Present and Future—Why did dengue suddenly emerge in the Americas?” She made her observations against an abstract which said “dengue is the most rapidly spreading viral disease in the world and its incidence has increased 30-fold over the last 50 years.”
Carrington’s work focuses on using molecular genetic approaches to recover this information and reconstruct the history of dengue virus populations in Trinidad and the wider Americas. “It costs about US$321 million to deal with dengue in the Caribbean and that does not include indirect costs,” Carrington said.