DOH warns of dengue outbreak

ANGELES CITY – Health Secretary Francisco Duque III warned yesterday that dengue cases this year could reach a “phenomenal” number and might even surpass the country’s worst outbreak in 1998.

As of last count, no less than 12,000 dengue cases have been reported from January to May, Duque said.

“There has been an increase of about 36 percent over last year. But in terms of average for the last five years, we have not yet reached alert or epidemic level, although our cases so far this year number higher than last year’s,” he said.

“Our highest (number of cases) was in 1998. Let’s cross our fingers and hope we don’t reach that, but there are indications it could reach, even surpass (the record),” Duque told reporters during the inauguration here yesterday of the 11-story Dr. Evangeline Macapagal medical tower of the Angeles University Foundation Medical Center.

“Let’s brace for the worse but we are not helpless.”

Duque explained that the trend of the mosquito-borne disease is going up since 2005 because global warming causes the mosquitoes carrying the dengue virus to become extremely hyperactive.

“Because they are hyperactive, they have to feed more and bite more,” Duque said.

He added that apart from global warming, the increase of dengue cases could also be attributed to urbanization and congestion.

“We now have more people, more congestion so mosquitoes do not have to travel far to transmit their virus,” he pointed out.

Duque recalled that in 1998, close to 40,000 cases of dengue – 500 of them fatal – were reported.

In that year, he said the Department of Health (DOH) had only “very few reporting satellites.” Such satellites are government clinics and hospitals that report dengue cases to the DOH. Thus, statistics from private hospitals were not even reflected in the 1998 figures.

In a later report, Dr. Eric Tayag, chief epidemiologist of the DOH, said that 1998 marked the “the single highest occurrence of dengue in the country’s history.”

“Heightened public awareness became a double-edged sword, one side contributing to allay the fear of the disease, the other resulting in fever phobia that resulted in overcrowded hospitals and unnecessary depletion of blood supply in some areas,” Tayag said.

Duque said the DOH is collaborating with the private sector, local government units and the DOH regional offices to band together and address the problem even as he stressed that “the success of the anti-dengue campaign hinges on community action.”

DOH director for Central Luzon Dr. Rio Magpantay said that as of yesterday, 2,006 dengue cases were noted in his region with five fatalities. Pampanga, Bulacan, and Nueva Ecija registered the most number of cases.