At least three persons in St. Elizabeth have been identified as having a new strain of malaria. This has prompted Ministry of Health authorities to launch a massive vector control programme spanning the coast of the parish to Whitehouse in Westmoreland.

Health Minister Horace Dalley, in a report to Cabinet on Wednesday, said investigations by health officials have confirmed that a Jamaican fisherman who visited a country in Central America contracted malaria.

Information Minister Donald Buchanan told journalists at the weekly post-Cabinet press briefing at Jamaica House on Thursday that the persons affected in St. Elizabeth had contracted Plasmodium vivax malaria.

Not as deadly

This strain of the disease is not as deadly as the Plasmodium falciparum, which has spread to several parishes since it was first identified in Kingston late last year.

Confirmed malaria cases have now moved to 287, with 268 of that number confined to Kingston and St. Andrew. The other parishes affected are St. Catherine, St. Thomas, Clarendon and St. Elizabeth.