THE Zamboanga City Health Office (CHO) with the support of officials of the 98 villages will launch a citywide anti-dengue campaign on Saturday.
Dr. Rodel Agbulos, city health officer, made the announcement Thursday citing there will be massive clean-up drive, aimed to bring down if not eradicate the number of dengue cases.
Agbulos said the clean-up drive is to destroy the breeding places of mosquito-carrying dengue to kill the larva or egg.
He said the best way to fight dengue is by destroying the breeding places citing fumigation only kills the adult mosquitoes but not the source.
The launching of a citywide campaign against dengue was arrived at when Agbulos met with the village councilors who are the chairman of the committee on health in their respective villages.
The CHO recently hoisted the alarm level in Zamboanga City to a "very high alert level" recently as the number of dengue case as well as fatalities has already surpassed last year's number of cases.
The number of dengue cases since January up to the middle of July this year already reached 1,136 with 11 fatalities.
There were 1,029 dengue cases with eight fatalities in 2009.
The citywide anti-dengue drive also aimed to prevent the number of dengue cases from reaching an outbreak level like what happened in 2007, Agbulos said. (Bong Garcia)