We should be alarmed over dengue

I personally heard of two dengue deaths in a span of just a week. One is a five-year old girl and another, a college student.

Two deaths in a week may seem like nothing out of the ordinary but I disagree. One death is already one too many. Even just a single loss of life is unacceptable.

The Department of Health (DOH) needs to be more proactive on this issue to raise public awareness, especially among those in the lower income segments where families tend to ignore a bout with fever to avoid hospitalization and other medical expenses.

A quick check of news about dengue would show that there aren’t enough warnings from the DOH even as no less than the World Health Organization (WHO) has sounded the alarm bells on dengue.

The DOH’s latest press release about dengue was issued last Nov. 7, highlighting that the number of deaths decreased this year compared to last year.

“A lower case fatality rate (CFR) of 0.26 percent has been observed as of Oct. 26, 2024, compared to last year’s CFR of 0.34 percent for the same period of monitoring. This is likely attributed to better health-seeking practices and improved health care delivery,” the DOH said.

As of October 2024, the DOH reported a total of 314,785 dengue cases nationwide. “Cases are declining overall, showing an eight percent decrease from Sept. 29 to Oct. 12, 2024, with 21,097 cases reported compared to the 23,032 cases reported from Sept. 15 to 28, 2024. All regions nationwide did not register an increase within this period, except for the National Capital Region (from 2,765 cases to 3,002 cases), Central Luzon (from 2,219 cases to 2,351 cases) and CALABARZON (from 2,907 cases to 3,513 cases).”

This is good news but while all of this seems comforting, we should still be very cautious about the situation. We cannot afford to be complacent.

The DOH and LGUs need to step up their awareness campaign regarding dengue. There must be regular bulletins on this.

Families, especially in the shantytowns, also need to be taught about the steps to prevent dengue.

Slum areas near creeks and those that are maze-like, dark and dirty are especially vulnerable as these can be breeding grounds for mosquitos.

It is therefore important that these communities are cleaned and the breeding grounds destroyed.

Other preventive measures include wearing clothing that covers more skin and using mosquito repellant.

Actually, the dengue problem is not confined to the Philippines.

Here are the latest statistics from the WHO:

“An estimated four billion people are at risk of infection from arboviruses around the world, and this number is estimated to increase to five billion by 2050. Dengue cases have surged across all six WHO regions, and the number of cases has approximately doubled each year since 2021, with over 12.3 million cases as of the end of August this year – almost double the 6.5 million cases reported in all of 2023.”

Dengue and climate change

I’ve also recently learned that dengue fever is sweeping across the Americas, with a skyrocketing rate of infections. Climate change, which is characterized by rising global temperatures, is contributing to the spread of the infections.

Says a Nov. 17 report from USA Today:

Nearly a fifth of dengue infections in the Americas and Southeast Asia were propelled by climate change, according to a study that researchers from the University of Maryland, Harvard University and Stanford University presented Saturday at the annual American Society for Tropical Medicine and Hygiene meeting in New Orleans.

Climate change caused 19 percent of dengue infections across the Americas and parts of Southeast Asia, the study found. The infection rates were significantly higher in regions previously thought too cool to support the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which can carry dengue and other diseases.

“Dengue is really having its biggest year in history,” said Dr. Gabriela Paz-Bailey, chief of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s dengue branch, based in Puerto Rico. “Around the world, dengue cases have been rising at an alarming rate.”

Against this backdrop, the Marcos administration should be more proactive about the dengue situation in our country today.

More importantly, the DOH must also make sure that public hospitals are equipped and ready to handle dengue cases.

Aside from raising awareness, the DOH should also look into other methods to arrest the problem.

For instance, the Monash University’s World Mosquito Program (WMP) is promoting the use of its Wolbachia method to fight dengue. This method does not aim to reduce the mosquito population but rather to replace it with Wolbachia mosquitoes. This helps block the transmission of dengue, as well as other viruses transmitted by Aedes aegypti mosquitoes or those mosquitoes that spread dengue and other viruses, it said.

“Our research shows that in communities where high levels of Wolbachia mosquitoes are present, the incidence of dengue and other Aedes-borne diseases is significantly reduced,” the WMP said.

Whatever the DOH decides to do, it must act with more urgency now so that everyone becomes aware of the situation.

Schools, universities, LGUs and residential communities must likewise take precautions.

More importantly, in our very own households, we should do what we can to eliminate mosquito breeding grounds.

It’s a serious problem and the least we can do is to take it seriously.

As the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s dengue branch has observed, 2024 is turning out to be dengue’s biggest year.

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Email: [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @eyesgonzales. Column archives at EyesWideOpen on FB.