EDITORIAL- Right in our backyard

 With the typhoons and floods come the mosquitoes, and all the diseases borne by the insects. In addition to dengue, there’s another mosquito-borne disease that is now worrying health professionals. It’s called chikungunya, and the symptoms are so similar to dengue there’s a danger of misdiagnosis and late treatment, according to health officials.

There is no cure for Chikungunya, but symptoms can be relieved. The disease is carried by the same mosquito that spreads the dengue virus, the Aedes aegypti. Prevention is therefore similar to dengue, consisting mainly of keeping surroundings clean and free of stagnant water. The use of mosquito nets, preferably the type treated against insects, can go a long way in disease prevention.

Dengue has plagued tropical and sub-tropical countries for a long time. In the Philippines, the disease claims hundreds of lives every year, with the victims mostly children. The World Health Organization recognized the disease for the first time in the 1950s following epidemics in the Philippines and Thailand. Today the WHO estimates that more than 40 percent of the world’s population, or about 2.5 billion people, are at risk from dengue, and the disease has become endemic in over 100 countries. Every year about 500,000 people require hospitalization for severe dengue, with about 2.5 percent resulting in death.

Dengue is rapidly spreading, with local transmission reported for the first time in France and Croatia in 2010 and imported cases detected in three other countries in Europe. The mosquito thrives in man-made containers in urban and semi-urban centers, according to disease experts.

Getting rid of those breeding grounds is the best preventive measure while the world waits for the release of the first dengue vaccine. The Department of Health has launched the so-called 4 o’clock habit, with teams going around communities at 4 p.m. to eliminate mosquito breeding grounds such as empty tin cans, old tires and coconut husks. The DOH message in its campaign is worth heeding: this fight can be won right in our own backyard.