Minister of Tourism Felix Jiménez, in an interview with El Caribe newspaper, says that no tourist, Dominican or foreign, needs to take any kind of prophylaxis to prevent malaria when visiting the Bavaro zone in the East of the DR. In the Bavaro zone, 12 cases of malaria were reported in 1999. About one million tourists visited the Punta Cana tourism area last year, of approximately 2.7 million tourists to the DR. Tourists are recommended to use insect repellent as mosquitos are common in this tropical environment. Jiménez explained the cases were due to the influx of Haitian laborers employed in the construction of four hotels in the area. When the first cases were known, the Ministry of Public Health took special measures to eliminate any possible future cases, he said. Furthermore, following a meeting of the Ministry of Public Health, the Ministry of Tourism and the Hotel Association, the construction of the hotels was suspended until all measures were in place to eliminate any possible future cases. The president of the Asociación de Constructores y Promotores de Viviendas, José Ramón Martínez Burgos said that contractors are increasingly mechanizing the building of ditches to depend less on Haitian labor. He pointed out that 400 Haitian workers in the Bavaro-Punta Cana area were replaced by machines. (12 January 2000)
