A workshop to review dengue fever prevention and put forth measures against the disease was held in Ho Chi Minh City on Oct. 2 with delegates from Laos, Cambodia, Singapore and Vietnam.

According to Deputy Minister of Health Nguyen Thanh Long, about 100 countries are affected by dengue fever and 50 million people catch the disease each year.

As the disease has direct impacts on poor people and national economic development, the workshop aims to put forth effective preventive models of countries, the epidemic forecast and recommendations on the treatment of dengue fever in Southeast Asian nations.

The Preventive Medicine Department reported that so far this year, dengue fever cases in Vietnam increases by 21.4 percent and the fatalities are up 20.6 percent compared to 2011.

In the 2006-2010 period, the infected cases reduced by 12.1 percent while the fatalities fell by 16.7 percent.

However, in the first seven months of this year, 36,000 cases of dengue fever were reported nationwide, of which 87.3 percent in the south, 10.2 percent in the central region and 2.5 percent in the north.

Long said apart from mosquito larva killing and eliminating pools of stagnant water, local preventive medicine centres need to raise people’s awareness on how to prevent the disease through information dissemination campaigns.-VNA