27 deaths from Dengue fever already this year
27 people have died from dengue fever in Thailand so far this year. That’s the highest fatality rate, year on year, in the past five years.
The Public Health Ministry deputy permanent secretary Dr Supakit Sirilak has reacted by sending an urgent letter to related agencies to prepare measures to prevent more dengue fever deaths.
It’s estimated there will be about 10,000 new cases of dengue fever a month or about 95,000 dengue fever patients nationwide for the whole of 2019, according to Supakit in the letter attached with a guideline for patients.
According to the Bureau of Epidemiology, 18,000 people were infected with the dengue fever virus from January 1 to May 1 this year, and 27 of them, including 12 children, had died.
Department of Disease Control director-general Dr Suwannachai Wattanayingcharoenchai says the mosquito-borne infection caused a sudden high fever for 2-5 days along with severe headaches and pain of eye sockets and joint/muscle, loss of appetite, vomiting, coughing without running nose, skin rash, and bleeding from gum.
It also could lead to a shock episode, failure of the blood circulatory system, kidney and liver failure, and even death, he said.
Factors that posed more risks to severe or fatal dengue fever symptoms were the patients’ pre-existing chronic ailments such as diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure, heart disease, asthma, alcoholism, thalassemia or a previous history of having dengue fever, he added.
SOURCE: The Nation
Read The Thaiger’s Top 10 ways of avoiding dengue HERE.
