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Friday, March 29, 2024

Searching for the cure

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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.

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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.

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