Dengue experts take to the couch on OYE
Turning to health issues, a five year old school girl died from dengue fever at the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital on July fourteenth. The parents of young Melissa Cruz of Progresso Village claimed that hospital negligence led to the death of their daughter since she had not been initially properly diagnosed and furthermore she had been kept in the pediatric ward when she needed intensive care. The number of cases reported has been put at close to three hundred and fifty by the Ministry of Health but there are also many other cases at private hospitals. So, has dengue fever reached epidemic proportions? This morning we invited the public and private sectors to OYE to talk dengue.
Marleni Cuellar
“Let’s look at some of the specifics of the situation in Belize currently, how many cases do we have at this point in time?”
Dr. Jose Antonio Marenco, Dir of Environmental Health, M.O.H
“Well, uh cases that have been reported and are a part of our statistics at the Ministry of Health are three hundred seventy-nine cases up to week twenty-eight. Out of those cases, it seems to be that eighty-five percent of them are between the Belize district and the Cayo district. That counts for, one of them is about one hundred sixty cases the other one is about one hundred fifty-five cases and that’s between the Belize and Cayo districts. So out of three hundred seventy-nine, eight-five percent are out of these two districts.”
Marleni Cuellar
“What phase are we at?”
Dr. Jose Antonio Marenco
Dr. Jose Antonio Marenco
“In the two districts, when we look at the country the situation doesn’t look bad; but when we look at Belize district and Cayo district we are certainly in both districts there is a outbreak stage.”
Marleni Cuellar
“The question of the hemorrhagic dengue, how many cases have we had reported so far?”
Dr. Jose Antonio Marenco
“It’s forty-two hemorrhagic cases that have been documented in our statistics and thirty cases have been confirmed through lab; but this is something that we understand there is some considerable level underreporting. There are quite a number of cases that have been confirmed at private labs for example, that our system is not capturing as yet and we have made an effort to try and approach these labs so that they can share this information with us, with an intention to try and avoid other persons in the same household getting sick.”
There need to be a nation wide yard clean up in belize, people there tend to keep a lot of dump in their yards that is totally unneccesary, and unhealthy.
good luck belizeans…
This is when investment really affects us. We need an effective central office where all communicable diseases are reported (as mandatory whether diagnoses was in the private or public health sector). Public health promotion and surveillance is vital so we can know exactly what’s going on, i.e., Prevalence and the incidence of the new infections and some health promotion and educating the people about both communicable and non-communicable diseases. Lets get the nation healthier.
I agree with you MAddy, some people have no civic pride, but at the same time tha malaria dept should be out in full force walking around town checking on people yards, spraying every night, but heck you hear how seroius this is getting but nothing is seen being done, you only see these people on TV, damm Dr Marenco, get out there in the community and start to educate the people house to house,
every belizean by now should be aware of what is going on with Dengue. we all know that it’s a serious issue and we know what to do to prevent it. private doctors from Belize Medical Associates have been on various talk shows talking about ways to prevent the disease which is a good thing. all we need to do is keep our ears open, do our own personal research, be aware and be careful. we are an intelligent people, we’ll get through this.
macal, the people need to take some responsibility for themselves as well. prevention is better than cure.
There is an epidemic people should be smart enought to want to educate themselves over this matter, they can start by simple doing a neighbourhood clean-up.