ILOILO CITY -- A 19-year-old woman from the village of Pantalan Nabaye in the town of Ajuy, Iloilo died on Tuesday due to suspected dengue.
In a media interview on Wednesday, Dr. Patricia Grace Trabado, chief of the Provincial Health Office (PHO), said that they are still waiting for the death certificate of the suspect to confirm if it was really caused by dengue.
Trabado said the suspect came to their Rural Health Unit (RHU) on June 6 to seek for consultation and undergo laboratory test to check her platelet count because she manifested fever.
She said that the patient was still in good condition the following day. However, she was referred to Sara District Hospital on June 8 after she experienced weakness and loss of appetite.
On June 10, the patient was transferred to the Western Visayas Medical Center (WVMC), where she unfortunately died at 4 a.m. of June 12.
Trabado said that the deceased was among the 16 patients in Ajuy town with suspected dengue based on their latest data. Nine of these cases are from the village of Bato Biasong.
But Trabado said that the municipal health office of Ajuy still has to check their data of dengue cases for the last three years before they could declare an outbreak.
“But if their cases will rapidly increase, the area could be declared but not necessarily the whole province,” she said.
Trabado said that the cases of dengue in the province have decreased compared to previous years.
From January until June 2 this year, there were 309 dengue cases in the province and 252 on the same period of 2017. The data is lower compared to the 1,034 dengue cases recorded in the same period in 2016.
Meantime, Trabado assured that the RHU in Ajuy town is consistently monitoring dengue cases and is relentlessly campaigning to fight dengue especially that rainy season is being experienced.
She said they were already advised to spray larvacides and adulticides in the entire town, especially in the villages with recorded dengue cases to get rid of mosquitoes. (PNA)
