CARPHA flags chikungunya resurgence in the region

The Caribbean Pub­lic Health Agency (CARPHA) is re­mind­ing its mem­ber states of the im­por­tance of the In­te­grat­ed Vec­tor Man­age­ment ap­proach in ad­dress­ing the resur­gence of the Chikun­gun­ya Virus and oth­er ar­bovi­ral dis­eases such as Dengue and Zi­ka.

In a me­dia re­lease is­sued to­day, the agency not­ed that the Chikun­gun­ya Virus spreads through the bite of an in­fect­ed Aedes ae­gyp­ti mos­qui­to. It de­scribed source re­duc­tion as the cor­ner­stone of pre­ven­tion and con­trol against these mos­qui­toes, but said an In­te­grat­ed Vec­tor Man­age­ment ap­proach re­mains nec­es­sary—es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing out­breaks when au­thor­i­ties utilise chem­i­cal agents such as spray­ing and fog­ging to tar­get adult mos­qui­toes and de­crease the like­li­hood of dis­ease trans­mis­sion.

CARPHA said a core prin­ci­ple of In­te­grat­ed Vec­tor Man­age­ment is In­sec­ti­cide Re­sis­tance Test­ing stud­ies. Fol­low­ing the ac­qui­si­tion and com­mis­sion­ing of CARPHA’s new Mo­bile In­sec­tary Fa­cil­i­ty in Oc­to­ber 2025, the agency re­ports it can now pro­vide In­sec­ti­cide Re­sis­tance Test­ing, in­clud­ing mol­e­c­u­lar test­ing, to mem­ber states.

Since op­er­a­tions be­gan, CARPHA has com­plet­ed test­ing for two mem­ber states us­ing method­olo­gies ap­proved by the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WHO) and is cur­rent­ly test­ing sam­ples from four oth­ers. The agency said it in­tends to bring two ad­di­tion­al mem­ber states on stream in 2026.

CARPHA said con­duct­ing In­sec­ti­cide Re­sis­tance Test­ing of­fers sev­er­al ben­e­fits to Mem­ber States. It ex­plained that the re­sults al­low vec­tor con­trol per­son­nel to iden­ti­fy the ap­pro­pri­ate chem­i­cal agents that will have the de­sired ef­fect on mos­qui­to pop­u­la­tions and guide the se­lec­tion, pro­cure­ment and util­i­sa­tion of in­sec­ti­cides. With­out these tests, CARPHA points out, it would be dif­fi­cult to de­ter­mine with cer­tain­ty whether the chem­i­cals ben­e­fit mos­qui­to con­trol pro­grammes.

CARPHA Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor Dr Lisa In­dar out­lined the agency’s on­go­ing sup­port to Mem­ber States.

“CARPHA has con­duct­ed a se­ries of train­ing work­shops to build re­gion­al ca­pac­i­ty to re­spond to the threat of vec­tor-borne dis­eases (VBD). The lat­est of these were held in Au­gust, Sep­tem­ber, and De­cem­ber in 2025 and fo­cused on IVM, IRT, GIS (ge­o­graph­ic in­for­ma­tion sys­tem(s), VBD Ear­ly Warn­ing Sys­tems, and new meth­ods and tech­nolo­gies in vec­tor con­trol,” Dr In­dar said.

“CARPHA is work­ing with CMS to de­vel­op a Re­gion­al In­te­grat­ed Ear­ly Warn­ing Sys­tem as well as to im­prove sur­veil­lance ca­pac­i­ty by im­ple­ment­ing in­no­v­a­tive tools,” she added.

The agency said it con­tin­ues to col­lab­o­rate with re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners to strength­en pre­pared­ness and re­sponse to vec­tor-borne and oth­er com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases. It al­so point­ed to the work of the Caribbean Vec­tor-borne Dis­eases Net­work, CariVec­Net, which brings Mem­ber States to­geth­er to share time­ly in­for­ma­tion to guide lo­cal and re­gion­al re­spons­es.

CARPHA en­cour­aged mem­ber states to adopt a mul­ti­sec­toral In­te­grat­ed Vec­tor Man­age­ment ap­proach that fo­cus­es on com­mu­ni­ty in­volve­ment in source re­duc­tion, health pro­mo­tion and per­son­al pro­tec­tive mea­sures. It said height­ened sur­veil­lance and a strong re­la­tion­ship be­tween epi­demi­o­log­i­cal sur­veil­lance and vec­tor con­trol re­sponse re­main im­por­tant in mit­i­gat­ing po­ten­tial out­breaks.

The agency al­so en­cour­aged fam­i­lies to fol­low per­son­al pro­tec­tion mea­sures to re­duce ex­po­sure to mos­qui­to-borne dis­eases, in­clud­ing Dengue, Chikun­gun­ya and Zi­ka.

CARPHA ad­vis­es cov­er­ing ex­posed skin with long-sleeved cloth­ing, trousers and hats; us­ing in­sect re­pel­lent con­tain­ing DEET, Pi­caridin, IR 3535 and oil of lemon eu­ca­lyp­tus; sleep­ing un­der mos­qui­to nets; and in­stalling screens on doors and win­dows.