THE City Health Office (CHO) assured the public that they have successfully treated all people infected of malaria in Gumitan, Marilog district.
City Health Officer Dr. Josephine Villafuerte said that after examining the blood smears of 645 people in Gumitan, 183 smears turned out to be positive.
These cases were immediately treated by the teams from the CHO and the Department of Health (DOH) in Davao Region, who stayed there from Monday to Thursday last week.
"Maganda ang response natin, we are proactive," Villafuerte said.
The teams saw that nobody in Gumitan owned mosquito nets so they also distributed 400 mosquito nets. These mosquito nets are soaked with permetrine to kill mosquitoes.
"Everybody has to use mosquito nets in the evening. We are calling benevolent souls who want to help in this mission to please donate mosquito nets," Villafuerte said.
Aside from mosquito nets, the teams did indoor residual spraying to kill mosquitoes inside their homes. They also gave health education seminars on prevention and cure for malaria.
Villafuerte added that they already made an action to make sure health workers are going to be assigned not just to take care of the malaria cases but also to prevent the spread of other diseases.
The same medical teams will be returning to Marilog, this time in the boundary of Gumitan and Paquibato to work on the reported nine cases of malaria there.
"The area is not accessible by vehicle. We are hoping that the medical teams can be carried there via helicopter in order to save time," Villafuerte said.
When asked about the dengue situation in the city, Villafuerte assured that prevention is easy if we maintain the cleanliness of our surroundings.
"Dengue can be prevented if everyone does the necessary measures like destroying breeding sites of mosquitoes and reporting the early possible symptoms of the illness," Villafuerte advised. (MAL)