Materia Medica Malaysiana

Dengue fears deepen

The dengue situation in the country appears to be growing worse.
And here is more discomfiting news: The current rainy season may encourage the breeding of Aedes mosquitoes, leading to more cases of dengue.
The Health Ministry warned last week that there was a dengue epidemic in four States — Selangor, Penang, Federal Territory (of Kuala Lumpur) and Pahang. Today, it reported an 11 per cent spike in the number of cases in just one week.
Between Dec 26 and Jan 1, there were 1,077 cases, up 108 cases from 969 the week before.
Also, since the outbreak started after Hari Raya in November, 12 people have died of dengue haemorrhagic fever.
Dr Ramlee Rahmat, the Health Ministry's Communicable Disease Control Division director, said: "We are concerned about the increase and worried that the rainy season may cause the situation to escalate." Selangor is the worst-hit with 469 cases between Dec 26 and Jan 1, up from 365 cases the week before. In Kuala Lumpur, there were 249 cases compared with 211 the week before. There was only a marginal difference in the number of cases reported week-on-week in Penang and Pahang.
Faced with the possibility that Malaysia might be facing a dengue epidemic, Dr Ramlee said state health departments had been directed to submit weekly reports on the dengue situation while the district health departments had been ordered to monitor and do ground surveillance.
Health Minister Datuk Dr Chua Soi Lek also directed Dr Ramlee to hold Press conferences twice a week to keep people informed.
"We will be very transparent and the media can get all the information it wants," he said.
It is learnt that the ministry has put control measures in place to prevent a national dengue epidemic.
Dr Ramlee said the ministry's health teams were working closely with local authorities, agriculture departments and non-governmental organisations to carry out operations to destroy the breeding grounds of the Aedes mosquito.
As of Jan 1, a total of 2.8 million premises had been checked and 25,529 of them had been found to be breeding the Aedes mosquito.
"We encourage people to put Abate in stored water to kill and prevent the breeding of Aedes mosquitoes," said Dr Ramlee.