NEA to beef up 'spot & destroy' team to 1,000 officers at an extra cost of $6.8 million a year
Jessica Jaganathan, Straits Times 10 Feb 09;
THE battle against dengue is to be intensified, with the National Environment Agency (NEA) adding 250 more officers this year to spot and destroy mosquito breeding sites.
With the increase, it will have 1,000 officers combing areas around the island for mosquito breeding spots. An additional $6.8 million a year will be set aside for the extra manpower.
An NEA spokesman said the additional staff will also help to address the emergence of chikungunya, another febrile disease spread by mosquitoes, which requires more checks in vegetated areas.
A test to detect dengue and chikungunya simultaneously is also being developed by the Environmental Health Institute, Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology and Tan Tock Seng Hospital.
Currently, three separate tests are done to detect the dengue virus, its serotype and the chikungunya virus. By having one test to detect all three will reduce time and money, said the NEA.
Senior Parliamentary Secretary (Environment and Water Resources) Amy Khor announced some of these measures in Parliament yesterday.
She was responding to calls by Mr Charles Chong (Pasir Ris-Punggol GRC) and Dr Mohamad Maliki Osman (Sembawang GRC) on steps taken to control the number of dengue cases here, given a surge in cases in neighbouring countries.
Dengue cases usually follow a six- to seven-year cyclical trend, with each year surpassing the one before. Singapore is now in the third year of a cycle that began in 2007.
Overall, while the rest of the region saw an upswing in cases last year, Singapore bucked the trend, recording 7,032 cases, compared to 8,826 in 2007.
But the number of dengue cases here increased in the first four weeks of this year. A total of 622 people were infected, compared with 472 during the same period last year.
Last year, the NEA carried out over 2.7 million inspections islandwide, which uncovered more than 20,000 mosquito breeding habitats.
The number of cases of mosquito breeding in homes also rose from 5,000 in 2005 to 8,800 last year, due to more inspections, added Dr Khor.
'Singapore is a travel hub with as many as 10 million visitors a year, and with workers transiting in and out of Singapore daily, it is continually at risk of outbreaks from mosquito-borne diseases contributed by imported cases,' said Dr Khor.
Dengue was still a threat, she said, and the public should 'not let their guard down and must continue to remain vigilant'.
An NEA spokesman said the number of dengue cases per year is still high and with the continued increase in Singapore's population and given the endemic region it is situated in, the risk of transmission of dengue will likely increase.
The NEA has been focusing its manpower in areas that are highly susceptible to outbreaks, averting large dengue clusters.
For this year, these 21 areas, scattered over the island, have been identified based on past data and risk factors, including areas not exposed to Den-2 serotype in the past several years and areas with high Aedes aegypti population.
Den-2 serotype was the predominant strain circulating last year.
People infected with one of the four strains of the virus can fall sick again if exposed to a different strain.
