Wednesday, March 21, 2007 Dengue cases up in Bukidnon By Danilo V. Adorador III
DENGUE cases in Bukidnon province have now reached a five-year record high, pushing the regionwide figure despite a declining trend in other provinces in the past three months of the year.
As of Tuesday, 47 dengue cases have been recorded in Bukidnon, compared to only 12 in the same period last year, records from the Regional Epidemic Surveillance Unit (Resu) showed.
The deadly mosquito disease has already claimed the lives of three victims -- one each from Misamis Oriental town of Tagoloan and the cities of Cagayan de Oro and Valencia.
Although the Bukidnon figure was only a fraction of the 168 dengue incidents recorded in Misamis Oriental as of this month, it marks a steady growth above the average number posted in the past five years, said Dr. David Mendoza, Resu head.
“That the 47 cases are distributed in almost all of the province's municipalities augurs a wide-scale increase in dengue cases once a simultaneous outbreak occurs within the province,” said Mendoza.
"When you reach the alert threshold, then something is brewing," said Mendoza, adding Resu, an agency of the Department of Health (DOH)-Northern Mindanao, has already taken appropriate interventions to prevent an epidemic.
Meanwhile, dengue cases this year have already reached 256 as of this month--slightly higher than the 234 cases recorded in 2006.
However, cases in all other provinces except Bukidnon have gone down in the past three months, with Misamis Occidental cutting by half the recorded 32 cases in the same period last year.
Mendoza reiterated the DOH's 4S strategy to prevent a dengue outbreak:
"Search and destroy mosquito breeding sites, seek treatment in case of high fever, self-protection through the use of mosquito repellant and other contraptions, and say no to indiscriminate fogging."
