More malaria deaths reported in Quirino villages

CABARROGUIS, Quirino — Malaria has also claimed the lives of at least six people in far-flung villages in the three Quirino towns of Maddela, Nagtipunan and Diffun, local health authorities said.

This, as neighboring Nueva Vizcaya has placed six mountain barangays populated by the Bugkalot tribe in Alfonso Castañeda and Dupax del Sur towns under a state of calamity due to the increasing number of malaria cases in these areas.

Quirino Gov. Pedro Bacani said the provincial government has been working out some contingency measures to prevent the spread of malaria.

Health workers have been dispatched to the affected villages to determine the extent of the outbreak.

In Nueva Vizcaya, Gov. Rodolfo Agbayani has ordered the setting up of makeshift infirmaries in the malaria-stricken communities.

Last week, the provincial board declared a state of calamity in the six affected mountain villages and allotted P139,000 for the purchase of anti-malaria medicines and insecticides.

As of Friday, health authorities had confirmed 16 malaria deaths and more than 300 cases.

No encephalitis death in Tarlac

Meanwhile, in Tarlac, the provincial health officer, Dr. Ricardo Ramos, belied media reports that Japanese encephalitis, another mosquito-borne disease, has claimed the life of a child in Bamban town.

"There was only one laboratory-confirmed case involving a 10-year-old boy," Ramos said.

Contrary to reports, Ramos said the child, who resides at the Dapdap resettlement site in Bamban, has recovered although he is still suffering from "residual neuropsychiatric sequelae."

Ramos added that a boy and a girl, both one-year-olds and residents of Dapdap, were merely "suspected" to be suffering from Japanese encephalitis although they have not been subjected to laboratory tests.

He said the media reports threw them into a quandary "since we have not monitored such, and the child referred to is still alive and recuperating."

The reports, Ramos added, "pictured Tarlac as having a Japanese encephalitis epidemic when there is none."

He said the provincial government’s efforts against Japanese encephalitis go hand in hand with the campaign against dengue fever, another mosquito-borne illness.

Japanese encephalitis is transmitted by the Culex tritaeniorhyncus mosquito which breeds in irrigated ricefields, shallow ditches and irrigation canals, and dengue by the Aedes egypti. — With Benjie Villa