DOH tags 50 dengue hot spots in C. Luzon

About 50 villages in six towns in Central Luzon have been considered dengue hot spots as cases there have increased by 1,000 percent in recent weeks, a Department of Health (DOH) official said on Friday.

The hot spots, which are rare to happen in the region, are located in Dingalan in Aurora, Mariveles in Bataan, Subic in Zambales, Cabanatuan City and Gabaldon in Nueva Ecija and Paniqui in Tarlac, Dr. Jessie Fantone, chief of the regional epidemiology surveillance unit, said.

“Central Luzon as a whole is not a dengue hot spot because dengue cases rose only by 10 percent. We have some hot spots at village-level and there is no need to declare these under emergency since Secretary [Francisco] Duque [III] has already declared a national outbreak [in July],” he said.

The declaration of an outbreak allowed local governments to use quick response funds from their budget, Fantone said.

Cases triggered by the mosquito-borne disease increased threefold in Aurora province from January to Aug. 10, killing seven children, reports from the DOH in Central Luzon showed.

The 197-percent rise—from 431 cases in the same period last year to 1,281—made Aurora the province in Central Luzon with the highest spike where it used to be low.

“Some villages neglected their duties to comply with the memorandum on the prevention and control of dengue,” Aurora Gov. Gerardo Noveras said.

The memo tasked barangay captains to, among other things, intensify cleanup drives and conduct an information campaign on dengue.

Nueva Ecija and Zambales both recorded a 25-percent increase in cases from 2,833 to 3,538 and from 679 to 848, respectively. Dengue cases dropped in Pampanga (39 percent), Tarlac (31 percent), Bataan (21 percent) and Bulacan (13 percent).

Overall, dengue cases in the region declined by 10 percent from 16,122 to 14,586.

Sarangani cases

Despite a spike in dengue cases, provincial and health officials in Sarangani are in no rush to declare a state of calamity, confident that the measures they have instituted to arrest the spread of the disease are working.

Sarangani Gov. Steve Chiongbian Solon said provincial and health agencies had been “able to control the [dengue] cases” as early as March as they instituted measures such as the prepositioning of medicines and machines for vector control in critical places.

Data from the provincial health office showed that dengue cases between January to Aug. 19 rose to 1,267 from 433 in the same period last year, an increase by 193 percent.

However, even without the declaration, “the municipalities [in Sarangani] are already working and the structure and the people in the field are also functioning,” Federico Yadao, the province’s medical technologist, said.

In central Mindanao, only South Cotabato province has declared a state of calamity due to dengue.

In Kidapawan City, Mindanao Development Authority Chair Emmanuel Piñol wanted the DOH to examine the concoction prepared by a herbalist in Matalam, Cotabato, as those who turned to him for dengue cure had been relieved of the disease.

Kidapawan monitored 636 dengue cases, including two deaths, from January to Aug. 21, an increase of 235 percent from 190 cases in the same period last year. —WITH A REPORT FROM WILLIAMOR MAGBANUA