Dengue spike seen in areas near banana farms

DIGOS CITY—Banana plantations here have become breeding grounds of dengue-carrying mosquitoes which could explain why villages near them have among the highest number of dengue cases in the city, according to the city’s top health official.

“We have established that many areas near these plantations, which have become breeding grounds for dengue-carrying mosquitoes, have high incidence of dengue,” said Dr. Milagros Sunga, city health officer, citing the cases of Barangays Kapatagan and San Miguel.

Kapatagan, which is near Mt. Apo, hosts several banana plantations and has registered 145 dengue cases from January to July. San Miguel is also host to hundreds of hectares of banana farms and has registered 95 dengue cases over the same period.

“Many villages with high record of infected residents are adjacent to banana plantations,” Sunga said.

She said other villages also have a high number of dengue cases because of the failure of officials and residents to rid of breeding vessels of mosquitoes, like empty bottles and used tires in their areas.

Village officials, she said, should now be more active in the fight against dengue, which had already taken ill 835 individuals—mostly children—from January to July. Six of the patients had died.

Sunga said a massive effort is needed to eradicate the breeding grounds of mosquitoes.

She said cleaning surroundings is still the best way to combat the disease, though.

Fogging, she said, would kill only adult mosquitoes and not the larvae.

Adult mosquitoes, she added, travel 400 meters away from areas where there’s fogging.

“We resort to fogging only on a selective basis,” Sunga said.

“The best way is to destroy its breeding places to prevent the larvae from maturing,” she said.

Artemio Ibar, the president of the city’s 26 village chairs, said he was ready to issue a memorandum to all village officials for a weekly cleanup drive in their areas.

“Let’s do this until this threat is over,” Ibar said.

Mosquitoes are known to breed in cool or damp places, which are characteristics of plantations such as those dedicated to bananas.

Many banana plantations in the country, including those in Digos, maintain open pits or ponds that would accumulate water or become breeding places of mosquitoes. Eldie Aguirre, Inquirer Mindanao