Illustrative image (Source: VNA) HCM City (VNA) –The number of dengue fever cases in Ho Chi Minh City in thefirst seven weeks of 2019 surged by nearly 250 percent over the same periodlast year, reported the city’s Preventive Medicine Centre.
Accordingto the centre, from January 1 to February 14, as many as 6,733 dengue feverpatients were hospitalised, or nearly 1,000 cases each week. One death fromdengue fever has been reported in the city.
Since the beginningof this year, the number of dengue-infected cases has increased 249 percentyear-on-year.
Thecentre’s director Dr. Nguyen Tri Dung explained that this year, the peak of denguefever season is more than 10 weeks late compared to the previous season,falling in the third week of 2019 instead of late 2018. Thus, although the typicalseason for the disease has nearly ended, the number of cases remains high.
Meanwhile,the city has also been suffering from a measles outbreak which has attacked manyareas in the world.
Localhospitals have been receiving about 150 measles patients each week on average.From the beginning of 2019, the city recorded 926 hospitalised cases. Thefigure for the same period of 2018 was only two.
Notably, duringthe Lunar New Year holiday, a strong rise was seen in the number of measlescases.
At the sametime, while on the decline, the hand-foot-mouth disease in children has remainedhigh compared to the same time last year, with 30-45 hospitalised cases eachweek.
Therefore,the municipal Preventive Medicine Centre advised locals to vaccinate children againstmeasles, while applying drastic measures to prevent dengue fever and hand-foot-mouth disease, including killing mosquitoes and washinghands regularly. –VNA
VNA
