DOH urges LGUs to conduct massive clean-up drive to avert dengue cases rise
TACLOBAN CITY — Alarmed on the high number of dengue fever cases observed in this city and several towns in Eastern Visayas, the regional office of the Department of Health issued on Tuesday a “dengue bulletin” urging the local government units and the public to conduct massive clean up drives to arrest any further increase of the disease.
Based on their records, the region has 902 confirmed dengue fever cases with nine deaths, regional sentinel nurse Boyd Cerro said during a telephone interview.
And while the number of dengue fever cases in the region was relatively lower compared to last year’s 1,200 cases, its fatalities were higher than last year’s eight deaths, Cerro said.
The regional sentinel nurse said that the number of dengue fever cases in the region may just keep on increasing with the onset of the rainy season, a condition he described to be “favorable” for mosquitoes.
Cerro said that the rainy days in the region may last until February of next year .
“This is the reason why the DOH in the region issued a dengue bulletin last Tuesday calling the public and the local government units to conduct a massive clean up drive to eliminate breeding places of mosquitoes which causes the dengue fever,” Cerro said.
Schools are also to be given copies of the dengue bulletin issued by the DOH as majority of the victims of dengue fever were schoolchildren, the regional health sentinel nurse said.
The bulletin contains how to best combat the ailment, which mainly concerns on cleaning up breeding grounds of mosquitoes which carries the dengue fever vector, symptoms and signs of persons who have the dengue fever and on treatment of the disease.
Cerro urged the public and the local government units to clean up all possible breeding grounds such as canal, house gutters and empty bottles or containers as a way to address the problem.
Cerro noted of a high cases of dengue fever in some localities in the region to include Tacloban City.
From January up to first week of this month, the DOH-8 has already monitored 103 dengue fever cases in Tacloban with three deaths, 63 cases with one death in Can-avid, and more than 40 cases with no death reported in Dolores, both towns are in Eastern Samar.
Covering the same period, 36 dengue fever cases were also monitored by the DOH in Kananga, Leyte, 19 in Biliran, Biliran and 10 in Palo, Leyte. No deaths were reported in these areas, Cerro said.
“These are the areas which contributed to the increase of the number of dengue fever cases in the region,” Cerro noted.
The World Health Organization defines dengue fever as a mosquito-borne infection that causes severe flu-like illness which could prove to be fatal if not treated immediately.
Dengue viruses are transmitted to humans through the bites of infective female Aedes mosquitoes. Mosquitoes generally acquire the virus while feeding on the blood of an infected person.
The WHO has acknowledged that dengue fever cases has grown dramatically for the past few years that make it a global health concern with an estimated 50 million people getting the disease every year. (JOEY A. GABIETA)
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