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Monday, September 05, 2005
Swift response critical in fight against dengue
By Linette C. Ramos
Sun.Star Staff Reporter
A MARKET vendor in Barangay Inayawan, Cebu City paid a high price for the lack of awareness on dengue fever and its symptoms.
Esther Badana, 45, lost her only child to dengue last month.
Had she recognized earlier that her son’s fever and stomachache were already symptoms of the illness, Badana said her son would have recovered.
Although he was already weak, she thought it was just an ordinary fever. “I never thought it was dengue,” she told Sun.Star Cebu.
Badana admitted she did not know that body malaise and high fever are among the symptoms of dengue, which is why it took her five days to bring 14-year-old Nick Floyd to the hospital.
It was too late. By the time he was confined at the Sacred Heart Hospital last Aug. 16, he was already suffering from dengue shock.
He died the next morning.
Knowing that regret will not bring her son back, Badana said she hopes her experience will be a reminder for other parents to be more careful and vigilant in fighting the dengue virus.
She advised mothers not to take for granted a child’s fever or body weakness to avoid hospitalization or, worse, death in the family.
Cebu City Vice Mayor Michael Rama’s son, Mikel, was luckier.
The number of dengue patients from different income levels only proves the disease can affect anyone, Rama said.
Mikel, 19, was first hospitalized in July on suspicion of dengue fever. He was confined again for one week last week, after he was found dengue-positive.
For the hospital services alone, Rama said they spent about P30,000, excluding doctor’s fees and medicines.
“This calls for a need to educate the people on what they are supposed to do before it’s too late, especially in the congested communities. Dengue can hit anybody when the surroundings are unsanitary and there is stagnant water,” he said in a phone interview yesterday.
At the first sign of fever, stomachache or weakness, Badana advices that the child be taken to a clinic with laboratory facilities, for a check-up and blood test.
Better yet, parents should take their child to a hospital if they are uncertain about what their child is going through.
“Because we don’t really know more about dengue, we don’t immediately go to the hospital to have our children checked,” Badana said in Cebuano.
Badana, who sells rice cakes at the Inayawan public market, feels she was ill-advised by the doctors she consulted.
None of the two doctors she consulted before bringing Nick to the hospital suspected that her son was suffering from dengue. Nor did they advise her to take the boy to a hospital.
With some 870 dengue cases reported in the city so far this year and 23 deaths, Badana feels the City Health Department should do more in increasing awareness about dengue among the public.
Whatever the health department is doing is not enough, she said, since its programs related to dengue still have not reached their community in sitio Tunob Lapok in Inayawan.
“I don’t see any effect of their (health department’s) program. I think all their campaign is just in the media and on paper. They haven’t taken action. They haven’t been to our place,” she lamented.
Instead of interviewing the families of the fatalities, as what she has experienced with some health workers, Badana said the health department should just focus on their information campaign to prevent more deaths. |
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