The Fox Hill Urban Renewal partnered with the area’s constituency office, the Ministry of Health and the Bahamas Red Cross to host a Zika virus awareness and prevention exercise on Saturday.
The aim of the exercise is to educate Fox Hill residents about the virus, its risks and measures that can be taken to limit the spread of the disease in their area.
Assistant Director of Environmental Health Services Andrew Thompson gave suggestions to residents.
“It’s a partnership we’re working with because we know the greatest success in controlling Zika is partnerships with persons in government agencies to get the problem under control. We can see that there are some problems in regards to container breeding, any man made container that is able to hold water can be a source of breeding of this particular mosquito,” he said.
“In terms of things residents can do, first we look at source reduction, which is the removal of breeding sites, if you’re not able to move your containers right away, you can turn them down or make arrangements to call the Department of Environmental Health services and we will come and remove it for you,” Mr. Thompson said.
Inspector Dino Josey, head of the Fox Hill Urban Renewal Center, said he is confident in his group’s ability to inform residents.
“We are aware of the potential problem of the Zika virus in this area and we want to sensitize the public about the virus. Even though there were persons we didn’t reach today, we are confident that we will be able to distribute the information we received today from the Department of Environmental Health Services. We’re confident we will be able to get the Fox Hill Community where it should be,” Mr. Josey said.
Urban Renewal Co-ordinator Kelvin Smith spoke about how the program plans on helping the community.
“We are joining hands with the Ministry of Health and are conducting walkabouts in the area to give out informational pamphlets. I think for residents it stems from keeping your surroundings clean, as cleanliness is next to Godliness. We can’t always depend on the government, sometimes we have to do things our self,” Mr. Smith said.
This exercise is the first in a series of informational exercises and preventative measures initiated by Fox Hill MP Fred Mitchell in an effort to eventually eradicate this potentially dangerous threat from communities.
At last count, The Bahamas was up to 11 confirmed cases of Zika.
However, health officials have warned that this number will increase.
