Mangyan area quarantined after 2 deaths from meningo

SAN PEDRO, Laguna – A Mangyan community of at least 30 families was quarantined by health officials of Abra de Ilog in Occidental Mindoro after two persons died of meningococcemia there last week.

The outbreak of the highly contagious disease was reported in Sitio (sub-village) Bulakan in Barangay (village)  Lumangbayan, where one of the dead, Gloria Sumayang, 63, had lived.

Sumayang died of meningo at the provincial hospital on September 5.

Sumayang’s grandson, Benson, 5, died two days after her while being treated at the community’s health center, according to Abra de Ilog Mayor Eric Constantino.

Constantino said the village chief of Lumangbayan, who brought Sumayang to the hospital, had developed similar symptoms and was now being treated.

Constantino said two deaths were enough for health officials to declare a meningo outbreak in the village.

The Department of Health considers one meningo case too many in a place where no meningo case had been reported previously.

A report released on Monday by the disaster office in Mindoro, Marinduque, Romblon, Palawan (Mimaropa) said the older Sumayang developed skin rashes, high fever and respiratory infection—symptoms of meningococcemia—a week before she died.

She was taken to the community health facility and later to the provincial hospital, which confirmed that she had meningococcemia.

Meningococcemia is a deadly, highly contagious disease that spreads through the air or through the transmission of saliva or respiratory droplets.

“Doctors said it is as contagious as colds,” Constantino said in a phone interview on Monday.