Two Caribbean Community (CARICOM) countries are reporting cases of Guillain-Barre Syndrome (GBS) with Jamaica indicating that the number of GBS related deaths now stands at six.
Jamaica’s Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Winston De La Haye, says of the six deaths, two results came back negative for the mosquito-borne Zika virus, while the other samples have not yet been received. He said the Ministry of Health is now awaiting pathology reports.
GBS is a neurological disorder in which the body’s immune system attacks a part of the nervous system causing paralysis. Concern has been raised about GBS, which has been linked to the Zika virus.
Meanwhile, Barbados has recorded three GBS cases so far, this year and Health Minister John Boyce said that while Zika was usually asymptomatic and severe forms were rare, there was “good evidence” from French Polynesia and Brazil that Zika was playing a role in increased rates of GBS.
“As long as there is travel and trade, as long as there are vectors like the ubiquitous Aedes aegypti mosquito, we will continue to face the threat of these diseases. We need to continue, in collaboration with our international partners, to ensure that we have adequate surveillance and clinical resources so that we can detect and respond to the agents of future pandemics that are aggressively evolving,” Boyce said.
He said that since Barbados recorded its first case of Zika in January this year, there had been 19 confirmed cases and 502 suspected cases reported to the Ministry of Health.
He said that both suspected and confirmed cases peaked around the end of January, and since then, there has been a significant fall-off in cases reported to the Ministry, with no new confirmed cases since May. Suspected cases had also fallen from a peak of 60 per week to less than five, he added.
