The number of dengue cases in Valenzuela City has “dropped significantly” compared with what was recorded in the same period last year, a public official said.
Ahna Mejia, city chief public information officer, told the Inquirer that the city had a total of 1,440 partial reports of the disease from January 1 to November 19.
The figure, which lumps together suspected cases of dengue (1,410 cases) and those that had been confirmed (30 cases), is 5 percent lower than the 1,517 suspected and confirmed cases in the same period of 2010, Mejia said.
The reports were culled from hospitals based in Valenzuela and those outside the city.
“Apart from our local hospitals, there are hospitals outside the city that later transferred their patients, who are residents of city, to Valenzuela-based hospitals,” Mejia said.
In October, the Department of Health (DoH) said that there was an increase in the number of reported cases of dengue in the National Capital Region from January 1 to October 15, compared with the same period last year.
Valenzuela was then fourth on the DoH’s list of cities with the highest number of cases (1,321).
At that time, Quezon City topped the list with 7,320, followed by Manila (2,984), and Caloocan (2,368).
Pasig (1,098), Malabon (937), Parañaque (899), Taguig (669), Muntinlupa (622) and Pasay (585) were ranked fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth and tenth respectively.
The “declining trend” in the number of dengue reports in the city could be attributed to the local government’s “consistency” in the conduct of information dissemination programs and clean-up operations, Mejia said.
Barangay (village) officials, in coordination with city health officials, also conducted mist-spraying operations to prevent the spread of dengue-carrying mosquitoes even when it was not the rainy season, she added.