Illustrative image. (Source: AFP) Hanoi (VNA) – ThePhilippines’ Department of Health (DOH) has declared the country’s outbreak ofdengue to be a national epidemic in the wake of 146,062 cases recorded from January to July 20 this year.
The declaration was made byHealth Secretary Francisco Duque III on August 6, shortly after a plenary meeting of the National Disaster Risk Reduction and ManagementCouncil (NDRRMC).
Duque said the reported cases are 98 percent higher than the same period lastyear. Of the cases, 622 were confirmed death.
Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana, asNDRRMC chair, issued a memorandum to all disaster response units across thecountry for the strict implementation of the national dengue epidemicdeclaration.
According to a DOHreport, Western Visayas has the biggest number of cases at 23,330. Seven out of the 17 regionshave exceeded the epidemic threshold of dengue for the past three consecutiveweeks.
Duque said the total number of cases nationwide for a week alone, from July 14 to 20, is at 10,502, or 71percent higher compared to the same period in 2018.
The Philippines has stoodfirm on its ban on the world’s first and only licensed dengue vaccine Dengvaxia made by French pharmaceutical firm Sanofi Pasteur, following the deaths of dozens of childrenwho were among the more than 700,000 people given shots in 2016 and 2017 in agovernment immunisation campaign.
In 2016, the country became the first in Asia to approve the use of Dengvaxia, but a year later, the vaccine was banned after Sanofi Pasteur announced that in rarecases, vaccinating people with no prior history of dengue infection could lead them to develop a more severe form of the disease.–VNA
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