Chikungunya clean up in Samoa

Transcript

The Samoa Ministry of Health says it is planning a mass clean-up to curb a chikungunya virus outbreak there, by spraying public spaces and checking people at the border.

The Director General of Health, Leausa Toleafoa Dr Take Naseri says it hopes to control the virus before 3,000 people arrive in Apia in three weeks for a major United Nations conference.

He says eight people have been diagnosed with the virus after the first 20 specimens were sent overseas for tests, and another 96 cases of suspected chikungynya virus have been reported.

He told Mary Baines because immunity to the virus is low, the situation is likely to get worse.

TAKE NASERI: We have asked a lot of people to help us. We are working with our key government departments to control this outbreak and I think we are just seeing the initial part. We are expecting that it might get worse because of our inexperience of our immune system to the new virus, and we are expecting more people to be sick. We may not know the immune response of our population because we haven't been exposed to this virus before so we are looking at what sort of immunity response our people will provide.

MARY BAINES: So what are you asking the community to do?

TN: Well we have been educating our public. It's now a matter of control of containing the outbreak, and the public have been advised to help with minimising all the breeding sites for the mosquitos. Cleaning up and clearing all those water retaining objects, the debris, the rubbish, especially these plastic containers that are non bio-degradable that can retain water for a while, and also the mosquitos can stay in the houses. So we are advising them also to be aware of that. And also the fact that most of this mosquitos bite early morning and late afternoon. There is also a recommendation of wearing protective clothes, using mosquito repellants. Our ministry has also upped its response because now we are respraying all the flights that arrive at our international airports from Fiji, American Samoa, and even the ships that come from Tonga, Fiji, American Samoa. The first case was imported from American Samoa. We are spraying the school compounds, we are spraying the hospitals, and soon we, this week, we are respraying the airports again and the ports of entry. And also we want to respray the hotels and the venues in preparation for the SIDS conference. There is travel advice to the participants to inform them of what's happening and we are trying to get the good communication to our public to reassure them of what we are doing, get some confidence in our systems. We are planning a mass national clean-up campaign, especially around town areas.