Dengue Fever Outbreak Feared

07/07/2008

Children wait to receive food aid in Kyauktan Township near Rangoon on June 21. According to the medical staff in Rangoon, cases of dengue fever have broken out in populated areas of the city, especially cases involving children. (Photo: AFP)
Dengue fever—a mosquito-borne disease that peaks during the rainy season—is likely to strike harder this year in Burma due to Cyclone Nargis, according to sources within the medical community in Rangoon.

Some medical staff in Rangoon said that cases of dengue fever have already broken out in populated areas of the city, especially cases involving children. A doctor who asked not to be named said that 80 percent of children admitted to her downtown Rangoon clinic were diagnosed with dengue fever.

“More babies, children and old people are affected by dengue this rainy season,” said the doctor. “Poor people from cyclone-hit areas are especially affected. Some of them cannot even afford mosquito nets to protect themselves from this fast-spreading disease.”

Dengue fever is a flu-like illness spread by the bite of an infected mosquito. Unlike mosquitoes that cause malaria, those carrying dengue bite during the day. The disease is especially dangerous in children and the elderly, who have little resistance and often die of internal bleeding. It normally takes its greatest toll in Burma in the rainy season, which began in June.

To date, however, no deaths from dengue fever have been reported this rainy season.
According to medical staff in the former capital, a serious outbreak of dengue fever could follow if the municipality fails to destroy the mosquitoes’ breeding grounds—mainly pools of stagnant water.

Mee Mee, an assistant nurse working at a private clinic in Yankin Township in Rangoon said, “Almost all the main drains in Rangoon are clogged up by debris after the cyclone, but the authorities don’t appear to have any plan to clear them up.”

One of Burma’s official newspapers, The New Light of Myanmar, reported on Monday that authorities have begun prevention work against outbreaks of dengue fever in two populated Rangoon townships.

The report said that measures are being taken to combat dengue fever and that government medical teams are providing education and awareness on the disease at primary schools and community centers in Thakayta and Dagon Myothit-South townships.

According to the Burmese health ministry, dengue fever killed almost 100 children in the country in the first seven months of 2007.

Meanwhile, international health organizations such as the World Health Organization (WHO) and the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), in cooperation with the Myanmar Maternal and Child Welfare Association and the Myanmar Red Cross, have launched a US $700,000 anti-dengue-fever campaign in 11 storm-hit townships in Rangoon and Irrawaddy divisions.

According to the WHO, there were 781 registered dengue patients in Rangoon Division and 481 in Irrawaddy Division as of the end of May.

The state media reported no outbreak of other contagious and epidemic diseases in the storm-hit areas, saying that a total of 206,039 cyclone victims had received medical treatment since early May.

Meanwhile, Burmese local doctors and medical workers are being invited by the Myanmar Medical Association (MMA) to provide free long-term medical treatment to cyclone victims, according to The New light of Myanmar.