Dengue still sending patients to hospital
The other illness that is creating havoc is dengue. If it weren’t for the H1N1, it would make the news more often. While many have fallen sick from H1N1, no deaths are related to it. But there have been deaths this year so far attributed to dengue. Doctor Fernando Cuellar, an Intensivist and Internist, says that the disease which is transmitted from mosquito bites has been sending more people to receive treatment at the Belize Medical Associates.
Dr. Fernando Cuellar
“The numbers are not seeing to be going down in any big way; we’re still seeing a lot of patients with dengue. What is more concerning is that we see quite a bit of patients with the hemorrhagic dengue in mild forms and unfortunately, even serious forms of the hemorrhagic dengue where persons will develop a problem with their platelet count, which is basically the problem. That would lead to complications such as excessive bleeding. What makes it a bit more frightening, and I want to chose that word carefully, is that to treat that complication is very difficult in Belize because we don’t have the resources to treat the hemorrhagic dengue per se. We have availability of plasma and that is limited because our blood bank system works on replacement. So unless you can come up with certain amount of donors many times, then our access to plasma resources is limited. We do get a lot of understanding from the blood bank. Remember dengue is a viral entity transmitted by mosquitoes and when it comes to something viral, the symptoms are non-specific we call it, meaning that we would have the person complain of general symptoms such as headaches and joint pains and muscles pains. There’s always headache seems to be one of the biggest ones, fever of course, and we’ve actually had cases without fever. You can have mild respirator illness, little bit of sore throat and coughing. Dry cough is usually non-productive meaning that you’re not bringing up a lot of phlegm. Lack of appetite, that’s one of the big ones also. People will say my appetite has dropped, I don’t have any taste in my mouth, I don’t want to eat and I have to force myself to be drinking stuff. Of course, the lack of energy, it just seems to turn off a switch when it comes to the energy and they get so tired so easily. So those are the more common symptoms.”
Jose Sanchez
“I understand there have been a couple deaths related to dengue at least in this year alone. You have any cases here related?”
Dr. Fernando Cuellar
“In this institution we haven’t had any individuals passing away but I do know of both of public and private setting there have been indeed fatalities from Dengue.”
