Friday, October 05, 2007 Declaration up today before Cebu City Council; Tomas seeks focus on its symptoms
IN preparation for a rise in cases, Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña wants to create a “dengue scare” by placing the entire city under a state of calamity so that calamity funds can be used for free dengue fever testing and an information campaign.
The City Council will hold a special session this morning to pass a resolution declaring the city under a state of calamity.
From the campaign on sanitation, the City Government will shift its focus to an awareness campaign on the symptoms of dengue fever, to prevent more deaths.
Declaring a state of calamity in Barangays Bulacao and Pardo after the dengue outbreak in these areas is not enough, the mayor said.
“It should be the entire city. We should declare an all-out danger and dengue alert because the way things are happening right now, several dozens of people will die in the coming weeks if we don’t get our acts together. This is worse than a terrorist attack in terms of the number of fatalities,” Osmeña said yesterday.
Nationwide, dengue fever has afflicted at least 24,689 persons in the Philippines since January, of whom 283 have died. But an Agence France Presse report quoted Dr. Eric Tayag, head of the National Epidemiology Center, as saying he expected even more cases in October, owing to the wet weather.
Too late
For the Cebu City mayor, it is too late to focus on a cleanliness drive since the public refuses to cooperate despite the increasing number of deaths, which reached 25 as of Sept. 30.
The City Health Department has recorded 1,000 dengue patients from 73 of the city’s 80 barangays since Jan. 1.
Two barangays were declared outbreak areas while 10 others were identified as hotspot areas with four or more cases a week.
Osmeña also instructed the City Health Department to take the lead in setting up the free dengue testing center and to produce campaign materials, television, radio and newspaper ads informing the public on the signs and symptoms of dengue.
The testing laboratory should be ready in a week’s time, he said.
“I instructed the vice mayor to focus on the awareness campaign on the symptoms of dengue. Let’s not focus so much on cleanliness, it’s not effective and it’s too late for that. We should start a dengue scare already,” he said.
“The whole objective here is we might not be able to do anything about who gets the virus but at least we can cut down the deaths if people get a test early. If we can get people to be paranoid then they will get a test for dengue, otherwise they will just wait and wait until the patient is dead,” Osmeña continued.
The City Government has some P50 million left in calamity funds but the council has yet to decide how much it can spend for the dengue prevention and information campaign.
It may not be much, since the mayor also intends to use the calamity funds to address the city’s flooding problems and to construct mini-dikes in the mountain barangays.
During an emergency meeting yesterday, Vice Mayor Michael Rama, some city councilors and City Health Department officials agreed that a citywide state of calamity is necessary to prepare for the peak months of dengue cases, October and November.
Resolution
Councilor Augustus Pe Jr., chairman of the committee on public safety and order, said they will pass the resolution on the state of calamity this morning.
Aside from a free testing center at the City Health Department office, the officials also agreed to set up a free testing center and a separate ward for dengue patients at the Cebu City Medical Center (CCMC).
“Tomorrow we will make the declaration. We have to be on a red alert mode now because based on yesterday’s public hearing, the situation is expected to get worse in the next two months. Long-term measures like a cleanliness drive and short-term measures will have to be implemented,” he told Sun.Star Cebu after the meeting.
City Health Officer Fe Cabugao also said the declaration is necessary for the immediate release of funds for the supplies needed at CCMC and the City Health Department.
“Even before the peak months come, we should be prepared because we have already seen outbreaks and clustering of cases in hotspot areas and the number of cases will continue to increase. We might be too late in saving lives if we don’t act now,” she warned. (LCR)
