Rotary clubs: Fighting the dengue scourge

Last Thursday, a fellow Rotarian Dr. Wyben Briones was guest speaker in our Rotary Club of Cebu (Mother) to emphasize that the dreaded Dengue scourge hasn’t gone away when supposedly, Dengue is a seasonal problem in this country. This only tells you that we’re probably dealing with a stronger strain of this virus or to put it plainly, our people are just too complacent that they have a problem within their midst.

Last Sunday noon, the members of all the Rotary Clubs in Cebu that spearheads the Inter-Organization Dengue Larvicide Campaign gathered for a briefing at the Cebu Medical Society building together with its partners the Philippine Academy of Family Physicians, Cebu Neurological Society, Philippine Society of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, Cebu Pathology Society, Philippine College of Chest Physicians and the Organization of Doctors specializing in Lung Ailments and even the All Terrain Medical Relief Organizations that provide vehicles were all there.

What the Rotary Club members and Health Center volunteers did was divide Metro Cebu into sectors to put Larvicide Temephos (Abate) that the all the Rotary Clubs in District 3860 contributed, which totals around 100 kilos worth more than P600,000 and spread these in stagnant ponds or canals where the dreaded Dengue mosquito breeds.

Our Rotary Club of Cebu (Mother) under President Jose Soberano and assisted by Dr. Ben Aldana, Mr. Jose Gapas, Mr. Cheling Sala, Ted Gonzales, Alan Patrimonio, Edgar Chiongbian and Didoy de Veyra and myself, huffed over to our assignment in Barangay Basak San Nicolas, specifically in Sito Panagsama, where certain areas have been hit by Dengue.

In truth, this is a place that only politicians would care to visit only during the election campaign. As we went deep in the sitio we learned that the poor people living there were surrounded not by huge ponds of stagnant water, but rather small canals so badly built, water no longer moves. We were accompanied by the Barangay Health Workers of Barangay Basak San Nicolas where we even saw a man who had an area for his turkeys who had a water faucet, yet there was no drainage for the water to flow. Yet the drainage for the sitio was a mere three meters away. The owner told us that the landowner did not allow him to connect to the main drainage.

I’m sure that problems such as these are happening all throughout the blighted areas of Metro Cebu, which has no proper urban planning. I asked the Barangay Health worker to force the issue on this case in the hope that the stagnant water would be able to flow to the main drainage. One thing I also learned is that, there are a lot of people who are the so-called “Istambays” in the area who pointed the stagnant canals to the Rotary members.

I would like to believe that our visit to Sitio Panagsama gives us a microchasm of Metro Cebu. First there are so many “istambays” who could have been tapped by the city government to do what the Rotary Clubs of Cebu did last Sunday in order to prevent the spread of Dengue Fever in their respective areas. Sure, the Larvicide may be expensive, but if the barangay leaders did what they are supposed to do, they could have supplied this insecticide to the sitios before the Dengue mosquito could breed.

Dr. Briones told us that the Dengue Fever is still with us because at the Don Vicente Sotto Medical Center there were 89 patients and 18 of them are in critical condition. Worse, many of the patients are lying in the corridors. Despite all the efforts of the government to fight the Dengue scourge, it has not lifted the alert levels.

Dr. Briones was right when he told the members of Rotary that the whole world was overjoyed seeing the 33 Chilean miners rescued. But in Cebu there have been 66 deaths from the 9,974 Dengue cases this year. No cries for those who died when it could have been prevented. My own son JV was hit by Dengue 3 months ago; it the second time for him to get Dengue.

Every year we are hit by Dengue fever and people die from this because we do not learn our lessons from history. Remember the old saying by Barbara Tuchman, which goes, “Those who do not remember their history is doomed to repeat them.” This quotation is not about World War II history, but even recent history.

Lessons to be learned here is for the Barangay officials to tap the “Istambays” to clean their own surroundings so there would be no stagnant water thus denying the dreaded Dengue mosquito a breeding place. Finally, I salute all Rotarians in Cebu for their civic duty when called upon to do so.