Dengue fever kills 182 in Cambodia this year
Pastor Dale Morgan
Dengue fever kills 182 in Cambodia this year*
14 Jul 2007 08:01:20 GMT
Source: Reuters
PHNOM PENH, July 14 (Reuters) - Dengue fever has killed 182 Cambodians
so far this year and the crisis will continue to worsen unless concerted
community action is taken, the government and World Health Organisation
said on Saturday.
"This year is particularly severe and, if present trends continue, it
will be the most serious to date," the WHO and the Health Ministry said
in a joint statement.
"Community-based larval control and elimination of mosquito breeding
sites are currently the only sustainable methods of outbreak prevention
and the only effective method of reducing the risk of infection," the
statement said.
Health officials had been working hard in anti-mosquito breeding
campaigns in high risk areas since the outbreak, but the results were
not very satisfying, Ngan Chantha, head of the country's anti-dengue
programme, told Reuters.
"It's hard to change our people's behaviour. Health workers can't do all
the work, and villagers have to help themselves, too," he said, telling
Cambodians to clean containers every 10 days to stem mosquito breeding.
The virus was expected to reach its peak during the late
August-September heavy rainy season, Ngan Chantha said.
"I am asking all to join hands to fight dengue. We must kill the
mosquito-borne disease before it kills us," he said.
Dengue had killed 182 out of 14,986 infected so far this year compared
with 116 deaths from 12,300 infected in the whole of 2006, Ngan Chantha
said.
Last month, the four-Swiss funded hospitals appealed for $7 million from
donors to fight a disease that has reached epidemic proportions in
wealthy Singapore as well as striking hard in neighbouring Thailand and
in Malaysia.
Cambodia, still recovering from decades of civil war and the Khmer Rouge
"Killing Fields", was seeking 90 tonnes of pesticide worth about
$500,000 to contain mosquito breeding, Ngan Chantha said.
The Asian Development Bank had given $300,000 and the International Red
Cross had offered 35 tonnes of pesticide, he said.
Cambodia's public health system remains rudimentary, with much of its
funding coming from foreign aid.
According to the World Bank, annual government spending on health is
about $3 per person.