The Quezon City government will apply a house- to- house campaign strategy in efforts to make the city’s more than 2.8 million residents aware of what they can do to help control or prevent the dreaded Dengue disease.
QC Health Department Chief Dr. Antonietta Inumerable informed Mayor Herbert M. Bautista that her department will utilize barangay health workers (BHW) in an intensified information dissemination drive against Dengue, which is transmitted by the daytime-biting Aedes Aegypti mosquitoes.
“QC Health Department will utilize the house- to- house campaign to inform the city’s residents on the real cause of Dengue and how to prevent it. The house- to- house strategy had been proven effective in the city’s drive against measles, which achieved a drastic drop in the number of cases when the strategy was applied. This might also be affective in controlling the number of dengue cases in the city,” said Inumerable during a regular executive meeting at Bulwagang Amoranto.
She added that a one- on- one conversation with household members by barangay health workers, is necessary in informing them that having a clean environment and eliminating the potential breeding grounds of the dengue-carrying mosquitoes are preventive measures which are effective against dengue.
To date, the QC epidemiology and surveillance unit of the city health department had reported about 5,229 dengue cases, with 40 deaths. This year’s cases registered a 117% change in the number of cases as compared with the same period last year.
However, despite the increase, QC only managed to register the ninth highest number of dengue cases among Metro Manila’s 17 cities and municipalities, taking into account its big population.
Barangays registering the most number of dengue cases are Bagbag, San Bartolome, Commonwealth, Batasan Hills, Gulod, Holy Spirit, Sauyo, Sta. Monica and Novaliches Proper.
The QC Health Department had set up blood donation booths in some of city’s shopping malls in an effort to encourage more blood donations for patients with dengue fever and other high-risk illnesses.
Other activities regularly conducted to control the spread of dengue cases are supervised fogging, clean-up drives, and distribution of ovilarvicidal traps from the Department of Science and Technology (DOST). Maureen Quiñones, PAISO, QC
