TWENTY-SIX out of Baguio City’s 128 barangays have seen a clustering of dengue fever cases in the past month, says Dr. Rowena Galpo, head of the City Health Services Office (CHSO).
The highest case counts are in Barangays Bakakeng Norte with 26 cases, Irisan with 24, Loakan Proper with 19, Bakakeng Central with 15, Kias with 14, San Luis Village with 13, SLU-SVP Housing Village also with 13, and Asin Road with 10.
The other barangays tagged are Country Club Village, Pinsao Proper, Pinsao Pilot Project, Dontogan, San Vicente, Lower Quirino Hill, Gibraltar, South Central Aurora Hill, Fairview Village, Balsigan, Lower Rock Quarry, Engineer’s Hill, Saint Joseph Village, and Guisad Central. All of these barangays recorded clustering but did not exceed five cases per barangay.
Clustering occurs in an area if there are two or more cases within 14 days and 150 meters of each other.
At the start of the month, clustering was only seen in 13 barangays, which has since then doubled as the number of cases in the city continue to rise.
Cases indeed almost doubled to 306 as of June this year compared to 161 cases in the same time last year. No deaths have been reported so far.
On Thursday, Baguio Mayor Benjamin Magalong mobilized local government employees and police personnel to fight dengue in what has been dubbed as “Denguerra Day Thursday (War Against Dengue)”.
Galpo said possible reasons for the increase in cases include poor container management like improper disposal of tin cans, bottles, old tires, coconut shells, and others; people storing water in containers like drums, pails and tanks because of lack of water without properly covering these.
High mobility of infected humans causing the spread of dengue mosquitoes via land, air and water transportation; four serotypes of the dengue virus; and cyclic occurrence of dengue where there is an increase of cases every three years, are among the other possible reasons for the uptick in cases, she added.
Earlier, the CHSO’s Sanitation Division under Engr. Charles Carame and City Epidemiology Surveillance Unit led by Dr. Donnabel Panes have intensified the campaign to mobilize barangay residents to conduct massive and simultaneous search and destroy operations to weed out mosquito breeding sites and other interventions to stop the reproduction of dengue-carrying mosquitoes. – With reports from Gaby B. Keith
