Dengue desperation

“Piso para sa lamok.” “Ibalik ang Kodak.”

After the Quezon City government declared a dengue outbreak alert, a barangay in Mandaluyong City, Barangay Addition Hills, launched their own anti-dengue campaign offering one peso for every mosquito – dead or alive!

Not to be outdone, another locality, Barangay Matandang Balara in Quezon City, renewed their “tried & tested” anti-dengue campaign by releasing 500 frogs in various creeks and esteros around the barangay.

Call it what you will but the desperation for solutions is evident among LGUs, and they are effective in terms of bringing attention to our nationwide problem with dengue.

The declaration of a dengue outbreak in Quezon City was just a matter of when and where. It could have happened in Baguio City, Cebu City or Iloilo City because the perfect storm was already brewing since 2024.

The problem was the Department of Health, which chose not to press the button because the leadership was concerned about reputation management. Instead of declaring an outbreak like experts suggested, they downplayed the threat, believing cases will go down by the last quarter and Christmas.

But by November 2024, there were already 831 dead from dengue, 900-plus by Dec. 31 and approximately 400,000 recorded cases, costing the PhilHealth anywhere between P2 billion to P4 billion for dengue treatments in 2024.

With the New Year 2025, the bureaucrats thought they could start fresh at zero casualties and lower cases. But the weather had not significantly changed from November to February, the environment and populations remained in place and the mosquitoes simply kept biting and infecting people.

The attitudes of Secretary Ted Herbosa and FDA DG Samuel Zacate remained unchanged, living in denial of the potential dengue outbreak. The DOH continues to promote their multimillion-peso fogging and insect repellant promos, in spite of knowing how temporary and expensive these are.

The FDA keeps flaunting their political will, new building and rigorous and intentional review of all products while ignoring the increasing number of complaints filed against them with the Anti-Red Tape Authority or ARTA. 

For the longest time many anti-dengue advocates have criticized the DOH for intentionally not providing the number of dengue cases and deaths in various regions, provinces, cities and towns.

Comms experts have noticed the pattern of selective messaging by the DOH, mixed messaging that tones down alarming rise in cases, and the timing of health alerts on other diseases just when dengue goes on the rise.

One could label it as diversionary messaging aimed at the media that effectively denied Filipinos access to important information or warnings about dengue in their areas, as well as the opportunity to defend themselves from the threat.

Only when Mayor Joy Belmonte declared a “Dengue Outbreak in Quezon City” did many QC residents realize how serious the dengue situation was. Before Belmonte’s declaration, most of them were unaware or took the matter for granted. Now they are concerned.

So, why did Mayor Joy Belmonte have to declare a dengue outbreak and why did she have to qualify the announcement by saying “It is not our intention to scare the public but rather to alert them?”

First of all, Quezon City is very invested in public health, the city has for many years been collecting statistics and data on diseases, particularly dengue, and has trained thousands of personnel, especially health workers, about dengue.

Safe to say, they have had their eyes on dengue cases for several years. January and February quickly showed the rapid rise of cases and sadly, the death of 10 residents, eight of them children.

Officials of the city were familiar with the hesitance or resistance of Secretary Ted Herbosa to declaring a dengue outbreak in 2024 and left many LGUs waiting and wondering if Herbosa was going to call it or not. He did not.

In order to facilitate rapid response, the city officials did the right thing by declaring the outbreak. Lo and behold, the next day when media started beating the drums about the outbreak, DOH Assistant Secretary Albert Domingo generously shared info that was previously hard to obtain.

In his radio interviews last Monday, Domingo revealed that three regions were affected by the year-on-year 40 percent increase in cases – namely NCR, Regions 3 and IV-A, with nine localities on the verge of declaring dengue outbreaks. So now we know!

Mayor Joy Belmonte’s statement that “their intention was not to scare the public but to alert them” was probably in preparation for a push back from the DOH that defends their resistance to share data and declare outbreaks by saying they don’t want to panic people.

The fact that Quezon City officials declared a dengue outbreak instead of the DOH paints a very clear picture that local government officials are no longer going to sit around and wait for Herbosa or the DOH to decide.

In terms of solving the dengue outbreak, Secretary Herbosa knows that the permanent solution is a new vaccine that has been under review by the FDA for nearly two years (by April). But the secretary merely gives lip service to the vaccine.

For his part, FDA director general Samuel Zacate has not sat down face to face with various representatives of global and regional drug manufacturers seeking updates and clarifications on extreme delays at the FDA.

Rumor is that Herbosa and Zacate may be at odds after the DOH secretary visited the FDA several weeks ago, only to be told that the director general had left for a meeting outside the premises. 

If PBBM managed to find an executive for PhilHealth, perhaps it is time to conduct an executive search for a scientist-administrator to head the FDA and a veteran public health administrator to head the DOH.