As of August 29, 146 dengue cases are on the San Carlos City
Health Office records. 46 of these are confirmed cases while there are two
deaths. The data covers from January. Dr. Arniel Lawrence Portuguez, CHO
department head, admitted that the city is now Negros Occidental's dengue
topnotcher.
Portuguez said that last year, there were only 141 cases from
January to December and zero deaths. But the department head defended that
reporting system is already fast and accurate and that he is adopting a policy
that even suspected cases (cases unconfirmed through dengue blood test) are
also reported to the provincial dengue monitoring center.
"Ang nahitabo man gud sa ato-a nga kon makit-an ang signs
and symptoms [sa dengue] pareho sa hilanat nga tulo na ka adlaw, mo report
na nga dengue case," Portuguez explained.
This month the most recent dengue death case was recorded. It
is of a five-year old girl from Barangay VI. Based on reports, the victim was
brought to the San Carlos City Hospital but was immediately transferred to
Bacolod where she died.
On August 29, Portuguez and other health workers from CHO
gathered Barangay VI residents in the barangay gym to wage another information
and education campaign.
Portuguez explained that this should already be a wake-up call
since people are already becoming lax on cleaning the surroundings to bust
mosquito breeding places. But he said there is no need to panic because the
city's dengue figure is still far from being an epidemic and the victims do not
come from one area.
CHO is again revitalizing their campaigns in different
barangays.
Based on the Department of Health primer on dengue, there are
several easy steps to prevent the spread of dengue mosquitoes in communities,
schools and households. The core of these methods is destroying possible
breeding grounds by cleaning and proper disposal of discarded objects that may
hold any amount of clean water where dengue mosquitoes lay their eggs.
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