Compared to the ravages of dengue on local public health, Zika the virus en vogue may just be a pinprick.
Last year, dengue downed 108,263 Filipinos and killed 300. But this is what’s merely flashed on the official scoreboard.
The real tally could be higher as many victims didn’t know they had dengue so they just shrugged off their fever as the seasonal visitation of the lagnat which can be cooled down by antipyretics.
Speaking of fever, let me digress a bit. In rural areas, in the 1970s (what millennials call ancient times) cool nipa suka soaked in cloth was dabbed on the skin to bring down fever. One ended up being marinated like paksiw but it was, to many who had no access to drugs or ice cubes, an effective cooling balm.
As in many diseases, the reported dengue cases may have just been a fraction of the total. But the number of cases chalked up last year is by no means alarming.
It meant that one Filipino was struck every 5 minutes. And daily, at least 300 hospital beds were being cleared for the dengue-afflicted.
But if those who did not U-turn at a government hospital’s gate—upon seeing that the hospital was filled to the rafters—were included in the count, the tally surely would have been higher.
So when politicos hyperventilate that we should brace ourselves for the Zika, in prose which conjures the image that a flying armada of vectors is heading our shores, it seems they have forgotten that we’re battling a mosquito-caused epidemic in our midst.
In addition to human toll, dengue costs the country P16 billion yearly to fight, stop, and treat. Included in this calculation is the economic losses from skipping work, or income forfeited.
So when Aedes aegypti dengue carriers bore a hole in a skin, it also burns a hole in the pocket.
The blood its natural syringes may draw just be a tiny drop. What is large is the money it sucks out of the victim’s wallet.
Take it from the Department of Health. It pegs the average cost of treatment per patient at P18,405, a princely sum in a country where the monthly minimum wage is lower than that amount, and the number of the jobless who get no pay at all outnumbers those who get little.
No wonder dengue hotspots are usually low-income places where lack of sanitation and open canals become Aedes nurseries. Yes, poverty also breeds dengue mosquitoes.
This is not to say that a mosquito economically profiles its targets first. Dengue is an equal-opportunity tormentor, afflicting all, comforting none. But resilience and survival favor those who have the resources to fight it.
Not all victims hemorrhage from dengue. All of its poor victims, however, cannot escape financial hemorrhage.
But it is not just Aedes aegypti that must be declared Public Enemy No. 1 alone. Its cousin Anopheles, which is responsible for malaria, deserves to be hunted down, too.
Luckily, malaria prevalence is going down. A hundred years ago, this was nation of nocturnal shiverers, courtesy of Anopheles, the micro vampire. From hundreds of thousands, the number of annual cases was pared down to 46,342 in 2005, and further slashed to 7,720 in 2013.
From thousands of deaths half a century ago, only a dozen was registered in 2014.
I hope we can declare total victory soon, with zero malaria deaths.
I hope, too, that Zika won’t be substituting for malaria. But Zika is lugged by the dengue-spreading Aedes, which means that, like a multi-role fighter jet, the same kind of mosquito that dive bombs on Filipinos can carry the Zika payload as well.
It’s not that Zika virus has not been to the Philippines. It has been detected here before.
While our tripwires are up for Zika which, in this age of jet travel, can arrive here, either in mosquitoes or in men, the fight on the main front, against the ancient scourge that is dengue continues.
So the news that the Health Department has begun vaccinating school kids against dengue can only be most welcome.
The vaccine, made by a French pharmaceutical giant, is put to use after it underwent five years of clinical trials here in the Philippines, dengue’s Ground Zero.
The study on the dengue vaccine was conducted in five Asian countries, including the Philippines, and it proved not only its efficacy but also the competence of Filipino researchers and scientists.
The results reportedly showed that after three doses, the vaccine cut the possibility of developing dengue hemorrhagic fever by almost 90 percent and dropped hospitalization risks by two-thirds.
While the results are promising, it doesn’t mean that after getting inoculated, one can now invite these winged pests to a drink-all-you-can-party without fear of being afflicted.
The vaccine is just one weapon in the arsenal. The main weapon remains vigilance—and common sense like draining pots and pans of stagnant water, covering up canals, and observing general cleanliness and hygiene. Well, the classic ounce of prevention that is superior than a pound of cure.
Common sense does not come in injectable vials. It needs no prescription at all.