TO keep dengue cases at bay, Cagayan de Oro City’s barangays should actively clean up and destroy potential breeding grounds of dengue-carrying mosquitoes, the City Health Office (CHO) said yesterday.
“(In this case, prevention is better than the cure)…Fogging simply cannot be done automatically it has to meet certain criteria. Fogging has toxic fumes (that are) dangerous to people’s health and (if we rely on fogging) it can be detrimental to our health and to the health of our personnel,” said CHO health education officer Reagan Abbu in Visayan.
During the ‘Health Watch’ program hosted by the City Information Office, Abbu said fogging operations are done in areas where a dengue outbreak occurred or if some persons died of the disease.
“If there are more than 10 dengue cases in the area, then fogging will be conducted there. Fogging costs P4,000 per operation and in areas with outbreaks, it is done weekly for three to four weeks,” he said.
Hence, Abbu said it’s imperative that barangays actively seek out and remove any potential breeding areas for dengue-carrying mosquitoes to prevent any dengue outbreaks that may result in deaths.
“(This is what we call) ‘Search and Destroy’, the first of the ‘Five S’ strategy (of the Department of Health) in reducing the number of dengue cases in the country,” Abbu said in Visayan.
From January to May this year, the CHO said Cagayan de Oro City registered triple digits in dengue cases only last January and February with 165 and 145 cases respectively.
From March to May the city logged 63, 58, and 51 cases respectively. The numbers are lower than the triple-digit cases logged by the city for the same period last year.
Abbu said last year’s numbers are expected owing to the existing pattern of dengue cases surging every three years in the country.
Aside from sanitation, he said families are encouraged to seek early consultation and to wear protective clothing as well as mosquito-repellent creams or ointments.
“The CHO conducts free exams so long as families get (clearance) from their barangay health centers,” he said.
“It’s better that we don’t reach the endemic threshold because once that happens, (then stricter measures will be undertaken). It’s a good thing we were able to keep the numbers down. Based on our data, we’ve recorded 482 dengue cases as of May which is lower than 28 percent for the same period last year. So we should remind the public to clean our surroundings (to prevent outbreaks),” Abbu said. (Stephen Capillas of City Information Office)
