CHO: Sustained cleanliness help drop dengue cases
By Bong Garcia
Sunday, August 21, 2011
“City Health Officer Rodelin Agbulos disclosed that the all year round sustained cleanliness drive has helped reduce the dengue cases in this southern port city.
Agbulos said this is the main reason why the number of dengue cases for the month of August this year is still minimal as compared to the same period last year. Agbulos' office have recorded 49 dengue cases for the first 15 days of August this year, which is very much lower to the 485 cases recorded in the same month of last year.
He disclosed that a total of 573 dengue cases were recorded from January until August 15 this year, which is still low. Since January in this year, Agbulos's office has recorded seven mortalities wherein majority of them were children from one to five years old. Last year, his office recorded a total of 25 deaths out of the 2,487 cases of dengue.
Agbulos said the continued cleanliness drive resulted to the destruction of the breeding places of dengue carrier mosquitoes.”
REACTION:
What is Dengue?
As defined by the World Health Organization (WHO), dengue is a viral disease transmitted by the bite of an Aedes mosquito, particularly A. aegypti infected with any of the four dengue viruses. Its symptoms, which appear three to 14 days after the infectious bite, range from a mild fever to incapacitating fever with severe headache, pain behind the eyes, muscles, and joints, and rashes. Dengue fever lasts two to four days followed by a rapid drop in body temperature with profuse sweating. A second rapid rise in temperature follows. In some cases, mild dengue fever can progress to dengue hemorrhagic fever (DHF) affecting children less than 10 years of age.
As we all know, Dengue strikes again and sad to say that the number of dengue patients who died because of this rises. Approximately, ages from 1 year to 15 years old are most affected with Dengue. This case is highly alarming now ‘coz compared to last year and the previous years recorded cases, this year’s case is very high and it came to the point that the last years rate are now being doubled.
As far as I know, mosquitos are more active 2hrs after sunrise and 2hrs before sunset. We, human beings should be responsible enough to take care of our health. Although already an all-year-round disease, dengue is more prevalent during rainy days. June, being a rainy month, has thus been declared Dengue Awareness Month to raise awareness on the preventive measures against dengue.
As reported in news, DOH is now experiencing shortage of blood supply because dengue cases rise every day, every hour, every minute and every second. The Department of Health is now alarmed with the number of dengue victims. As I heard this news, it made me think to donate blood but I’m hesitant to give(because until now I’m suffering from cough) and I’m not sure if I’m qualified to donate.
From my own experience, I saw how hard to have dengue ‘coz I saw how my cousin suffered from dengue when he was around 8-10 years old I think. That was also the time that I knew that there are many symptoms of dengue and particularly with my cousin’s case, he didn’t suffered from any rushes but he only experience fever and when he was admitted at the hospital, slowly, his tummy started to become bigger and bigger and every time the doctor touches it or slowly pressing it, he’s starting to cry ‘coz he feels the pain. On the other hand, I heard that Ilocos Sur declared dengue outbreak in their region because of the continuous increase of number of victims and the number of children who died due to dengue. According to DOST, maybe the type of dengue virus who attacked in most children are the strong ones.
Scientifically speaking, “Tawa-tawa” is an effective medicine for dengue (if the case is not in serious level or grade) but when it reaches to the highest level, the only solution is dextrose. We can personally prevent dengue by regularly cleaning our surroundings, throw water that is stuck everywhere such as old tires, pails, cans and even pots. If we want to reduce this case and if we don’t want to lose our love ones, then let’s make a change. Let’s clean our surroundings and have healthy lifestyle. J
