Dengue-carrying mosquito
BAGUIO CITY-- The Department of Health (DOH) in the Cordillera Administrative Region (CAR) has begun a house-to-house dengue prevention information dissemination campaign in villages where cases were recorded to prevent an outbreak of the disease, an official said on Friday.
“We are focusing on areas where there is a clustering of cases to be able to inform the residents and make them aware what they need to do and to prevent more cases,” DOH-CAR regional director, Dr. Amelita Pangilinan said in Filipino.
She said they are using all means of informing the general public, including social media in their information drive on “destroying mosquito breeding sites”, “what to do in case of fever” and other pertinent information to the public.
“Our personnel is going down to the household level to inform the residents,” Pangilinan said.
She said they have to tap the DOH personnel, such as nurses and midwives--to do the house-to-house for information dissemination activity as most of the areas where clustering of dengue cases has been recorded do not have persons charged of IEC.
"Most of the municipalities, especially in Abra, that is why there is a high incidence of dengue is because there is no health personnel focused on the anti-dengue program,” she said.
“Ginagamit natin (We ask) DOH official, human resources of health, nurse and midwives under the deployment program to the LGUs (local government units)- go and do house to house and convince the village chiefs to do the same so that there will be nobody left uninformed,” she added.
Based on DOH-CAR data, there is a 4-percent decrease in dengue cases in the region.
Pangilinan said from January 1 to July 26, the region recorded 3,469 cases in the region, lower than the 3,224 cases on the same period last year.
"We don’t want to wait for us to have an outbreak, we want to prevent it as early as now,” she said.
Based on the latest detailed statistics from January 1 to July 13, Baguio showed a decrease with 210 cases compared to 246 during the same period in 2018. Kalinga recorded 289 compared to last year’s 509.
The other provinces, however, recorded an increase. Abra noted a 517 incidence with 409 in the previous year; Apayao 16 with 329 last year; Benguet 565 compared to the 462 in 2018; Ifugao with 354 versus 105 last year; Mountain Province with 207 compared to the 85 in 2018.
Patients from non-Cordillera provinces recorded an increase with 499 compared to last year’s 349. (PNA)
