How Cebu almost eradicated dengue fever

I was in Manila last Tuesday and Wednesday to get my French visa and for a series of meetings at the Bellevue Manila in Alabang, and to my great surprise, from the NAIA 3 Terminal, it took less than 15 minutes for the hotel car to reach Alabang… thanks to the recently opened Skyway, which in my book is a great boon to the folks living in Ayala Alabang. Now the Bellevue Manila, which in my book is one of Manila’s finest 5-Star hotels, is no longer considered far from Makati, for a higher toll cost of course.

My daughter Katrina took a much later flight in the evening, got an airport taxi, and from NAIA 3 to the Bellevue it cost her a total of P650 for the less than 15 minute trip using the Skyway to Alabang. Come to think of it, it was the first time ever that we flew via Air Philippines and it turned out our airfare was almost at par with the taxi fare. It has come to the point that it is even cheaper to fly from Cebu to Manila for the cost of an airport taxi fare to, say, Quezon City. No wonder more Filipinos are flying to their home province as airfares are no longer prohibitively expensive.

Finally when I had some free time, I decided to go to the Alabang Town Center, a petite mall that is very accessible from the Bellevue Manila hotel. What I especially liked in this area are the streets lined with champagne trees and beautiful sidewalks, making you think that you are not in the Philippines, but in a US city. If you ask me, this is what Philippine cities ought to emulate. Finally, allow me to add that for us Cebuano speakers, AirPhil makes their announcements in deep Cebuano, better than the taped announcements in PAL and Cebu Pacific Air. But they were an hour delayed on my return flight. I just hope they don’t keep delaying their flights.

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The other Sunday, The Philippine STAR featured a two-page article entitled “Dengue and You” by Dandi Galvez, which mentions a report about what Cebu did to fight the dreaded dengue virus last year summarized by that famous quotation, “An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure.” Unfortunately the article fell short of telling how this was achieved. So allow me to tell you that story.

Being a 3rd generation Rotarian from the Rotary Club of Cebu (Mother, now on its 79th year of existence), last October 2010 I joined a group of NGOs spearheaded by all the Rotary Clubs of Cebu led by Dr. Wyben Briones Visayas, chair for health concerns of Rotary International District 3860 for a massive campaign to destroy the breeding grounds of the dreaded dengue mosquito using a (Temephos) Larvicide, a UN approved non-toxic granules that stops the breeding cycle of mosquitoes.

My club members went to two dengue infested barangays and spread the larvicide in stagnant waters we could find. Last week, Dr. Briones spoke before our Rotary Club to advocate for a bigger and wider area in Metro Cebu. What stunned me was the report he gave coming from the Department of Health (DoH) that compared to last year, hospitalization and deaths due to the dengue virus had dropped by a whopping 84 percent in Cebu City!

This is a story that needs to be told especially to Quezon City officials, that aside from cleaning your surroundings to keep it from becoming a breeding ground, all one has to do is spread a (Temephos) Larvicide and it will eradicate the dengue scourge in your area. The Rotary campaign was done only in one day and the results for Cebu were spectacular. There were 400 Rotarians who participated last year; including many NGOs who volunteered to help. Tomorrow, Sept. 25 we will do this once again in a bigger scale with the aim of eradicating the dreaded dengue mosquito from Cebu.

What has happened in Cebu can certainly be duplicated in Metro Manila, using the same techniques and the powerful (Temephos) Larvicide and the millions of Filipinos would certainly be grateful to the handful of people who will participate in this campaign, as they won’t be spending a huge sum of money for their hospital bills. Indeed when a group of dedicated people do this for their community, they ought to be recognized. As the late British Prime Minister Winston Churchill said after the Battle of Britain was won, “Never had so many owed so much to so few!” This is so true in Cebu!

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Yesterday, the 7th Philippine Bird Festival, the country’s largest celebration of avifaunal diversity and bird lore awareness, kicked off in Dumaguete City as part of the observance of the National Tourism Week 2011 celebrations in Negros Oriental. This year’s theme is “Birds in the Wild Help Forests Thrive.” I gathered that this festival would feature the famous Visayan Hornbill and woodpecker and the Negros Bleeding Heart, birds that are close to extinction. You can say that if you save the forests, you also save the birds. Indeed, the Philippines are home to many species of bird and fauna.

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