InterAksyon.com
The online news portal of TV5
ZAMBOANGA CITY -- The City Health Office (CHO) has issued an alert level for the killer dengue disease as it recorded over 600 cases with 9 deaths for the first quarter and first three weeks of April this year. Health Assistant Secretary Eric Tayag said that the City of Zamboanga now topped the number of dengue cases nationwide for the first quarter of the year. In a visit to his city last week, Tayag said the number of dengue cases nationwide dropped by about 29 percent as of last month but added that the number of dengue cases in the Zamboanga Peninsula Region continued to increase. The increase was noted in Zamboanga City. While Zamboanga is a highly urbanized city, there are thousands of low lying areas where dengue carrying Aedis Aegypti mosquitoes breed. Barangays crisscrossed elevated roads create pockets of stagnant water or pools where mosquitoes thrive. Contractors usually just pour concrete over road levels and thus automatically create six to eight inches high improvised dams that prevent the flow of water to lower areas in the city. City Health Officer Dr. Rodelin Agbulos has already called on the over 1,000 college students, now employed by the city government under its Special Program of Assistance for the Employment of Students (SPES), to help reduce the incidence of dengue cases in the city. He asked the students to concentrate their time in cleaning up the barangays, particularly breeding places of mosquitoes that helps spread the diseases. For this year, the CHO recorded 157 cases with one dead for the month of January, 136 cases with two deaths for February, and 116 cases for the month of March with two deaths or a grand total of 407 cases with five deaths. For the first three weeks of April there were a total of nearly 200 cases and four deaths.
Dr. Agbulos identified six barangays; Putik, San Roque, Maasin, Recodo, Santa Maria, within a 7-kilometer radius of the city proper and Manicahan barangay, 50 kilometers east of the city proper where most of the cases were reported.
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