Over 500 children contract dengue in Mon State

June 15, 2017

HURFOM: Between January 1^st and June 10^th 2017, there have been 563 reported cases in Mon State of children contracting dengue, according to Dr. Nyan Sint, Deputy Chief of Mon State Public Heath Department.

Children under the age of nine are the most likely to suffer from dengue and Mawlamyine Township has one of the highest rates of dengue in Mon State.

Dengue is very common during the rainy season and there are usually two outbreaks of dengue every year, according to Dr. Nine Oo, the Chief Physician of the Mawlamyine Women and Children Hospital.

“Not every [type of] mosquito spreads dengue. There are mosquitoes that spread dengue and there are mosquitoes that spread malaria. The mosquitoes that spread dengue bite during daytime and grow in clean water. The mosquitoes that spread malaria grow in dirty water and bite at night,” explained Dr. Nine Oo.

There was an outbreak of dengue in Mon State in 2015 and four out of every 5,293 dengue patients died. According to Dr. Nine Oo, there is a possibility of a dengue outbreak in 2017.

In 2016, there were 398 dengue patients, but no reported deaths. However, compared with other states and divisions in Burma, Mon State has lower numbers of dengue patients this year. All of the dengue patients in Mon State have been able to access treatment in time so there is no reported death toll from dengue infection, according to the Public Heath Department of Mon State.

The staff of the Public Health Department, cooperating with the public, have worked toward eliminating mosquito larvae by hosting education events and encouraging villages and wards to check for mosquito larvae in standing water.

“When doing ‘Cover, Empty, Change, Filter’,[1] there are water tanks and pools that you can’t empty out the water. In this condition, you have to put mosquito-larvae-killer in the water,” said Dr. Nyan Sint.

According to villagers, public health staff are unable to provide larvae-killer to every village or ward and they have to prioritize the villages or wards where more dengue patients have been detected.

“Mosquito-larvae-killer is expensive so we can’t provide it to every house. This year, Mon State has 2,000 buckets [of the mosquito-larvae-killer] and we’ve already used 1,000 buckets,” said Dr. Nyan Sint.

According to the Mon State Public Health Department, only three wards or villages per township are able access mosquito-larvae-killer.

[1] . The slogan of the Public Health Department for mosquito elimination – cover water containers, empty water with mosquito larvae, change water containers regularly, and filter water when using it.

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