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Kim Bautista, Chief of Operations, Vector Control Unit
"So we are hosting a 4 day workshop starting today and the workshop has a few objectives. The first objective is that we will be finalizing the members of that technical team that will be advising COMISCA (Council of Ministers in Central America). We will also be taking the opportunity to draft a strategic plan for entomology in the region and third we will be looking at the need of the countries to strengthen human resources in that field."

"And the reason it is important is that one we must understand or the countries must have an entomology program where we are doing surveillance to see let's look at mosquito borne diseases, what mosquitoes that are known vectors are within various parts of the country, factor in the topography, the climate and everything, we use that information to identify areas of risk so that is one thing but then we have to look at the area of insecticide resistance. Vector control is an expensive action especially the application of insecticides so we need to know if the chemical we apply area actually controlling the mosquitos if they are working so all of this is part of the plan."

Courtney Weatherburne, reporter
"Where are we in term of vector control?"

Kim Bautista
"I think it is one of the areas where we have great deficiencies and it is not only within the Ministry of Health Vector Control but other areas such as agriculture, you know entomologists are far and few in this country, insecticide resistance surveillance is also something that is hardly done in the country but we have partners in the case of Belize that have been supporting us, there is a local research institution in Orange Walk called the Belize Vector and Ecology Center, we also work along with Mexico as well so we have been collecting information for example we know that for a fact that the malathion that we apply for the control of aedes that we spray actually works."

Ministers from Costa Rica, El Salvador and Guatemala participated.