Keep an eye on dengue, Suba-an tells PHOs

NORTHERN Mindanao top health official on Tuesday urged local public health offices (PHO) to include dengue fever in their disease surveillance and viral containment measures, other than the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) to prevent a repeat of last year’s outbreak.

Dr. Adriano Suba-an, Department of Health director for Northern Mindanao, said the region has, so far, registered 3,632 dengue cases from Jan. 1 to May 16, this year.

Last year, the region had 5,723 dengue cases during the same 18-week period, and ended 2019 with 28,927 cases which was a 38.5% jump over 2018’s 20,879 infections.

“Even if we are confronted with the Covid-19 crisis, still we have to give attention to other notifiable diseases,” said Dr. Suba-an in a news conference.

He said dengue is one of these, aside from influenza-like illnesses, typhoid fever, measles, and acute bloody diarrhea. As in the past, the provincial, city and municipal health offices take the lead in the 5S information campaigns at the community and household levels in exterminating Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus mosquitoes.

These 5S are search and destroy mosquito breeding places, seek early consultation for those with symptoms, secure self-protection, support vector-control measures, and stay hydrated. The region’s case-fatality rate lowered to 0.43% last year from 0.53% in 2018, based on official DOH-10 surveillance records.

Although the number of dengue cases went up, yet there were 104 deaths due to this mosquito-borne viral infection that can cause flu-like illness and other opportunistic infections last year, the same figure that was tallied in 2018. But Region 10 was among the 12 out of 17 regions that surpassed the epidemic threshold, hence the declaration of a national dengue epidemic last year.

The region ranked third, just behind Region 4A (Calabarzon) and Region 9 (Zamboanga Peninsula). Epidemic threshold is the three-month moving average of dengue cases over the past five years.

Last year, all provincial and city health offices reported a higher incidence of dengue infections over that of 2018, except Misamis Occidental which posted a 21.5% drop, to 3,046 from 3,702 in the previous year. Iligan had the biggest climb to 2,089 from 955 cases or a whopping 118.7% increment and was highest, too, in case fatality rate of 0.86 percent.

Misamis Oriental and Cagayan de Oro posted 71% and 49% increases, with 5,120 and 4,234 cases last year, respectively. Combined, dengue claimed the lives of 38 patients from the province and the city last year. Lanao del Norte had 20 fatalities out of 3,949 dengue patients while Camiguin had the least cases with 835 and had three cases of death. Nationwide, from Jan. 1 to December 14, 2019, the World Health Organization recorded 420,453 dengue cases, 94% higher than that of 2018’s count of 216,190. (Uriel C. Quilinguing)