The Health | september, 2019
10
issue: dengue
Threat
of the bite
Aedes mosquitoes sworn to plague Malaysians with dengue
Besides in and
around our house,
places such as
public rubbish
dumps are prime
spots for Aedes
mosquitoes to
breed.
T
here is an alarming rise in dengue cases in Malaysia. You saw the
news, you know the numbers are stacking higher than they have ever
been in recent years. And a wave of high dengue infections is also
occurring in places such as Bangladesh, The Philippines, Nicaragua,
and Honduras.
The facts and figures will be covered in detail in succeeding
articles. But no matter how we look at it, things are really, really bad. Why the
gigantic increase in numbers of infection, despite the government’s continuous
efforts in vector control? A couple of factors come into play.
The first, is simply the increase in population. The more people we have, the
more risk of dengue infection exists, particularly in urban areas of the country.
Other factors may include international trade, weather variability, and rapid and
poorly planned urbanisation. However, the more prevalent factor in the influx
of cases comes from our own awareness of our surroundings. We always forget
that the nook and crannies in and out of our homes can be breeding grounds for
High fever
causes high alert
Dengue outbreaks are spreading across the
globe at a worrying rate. We need to know why
T
Nearly 80, 000
cases and 113 deaths
were reported from
January until 3rd
August. There were
251 hotspots across
nine States, that
include Selangor,
Kuala Lumpur, Johor,
Kelantan, Sabah,
Penang, Sarawak,
Negeri Sembilan and
Pahang.”
The interface of the dengue app
developed by AIME, predicting where
dengue hotspots will be and when.
he increase in dengue cases nationwide
in the first half of the year is at an alarm-
ing number. Nearly 80,000 cases and
113 deaths were reported from January until
3rd August. There were 251 hotspots across
nine states, that include Selangor, Kuala
Lumpur, Johor, Kelantan, Sabah, Penang,
Sarawak, Negeri Sembilan and Pahang.
In fact, not only Malaysia is affected. The
Nicaraguan government has also issued an
alert after 55,000 cases were reported in the
last seven months, and Honduras is facing its
worst outbreak in 50 years. The Philippines
declared a national epidemic this week after
146,000 infections and 622 deaths were
recorded so far this year, while one hospital
in Bangladesh logged 1,300 infections in just
24 hours in July.
Why the sudden upsurge of infections? We
spoke to Dr Helmi Zakariah, Chief Executive
Officer of Artificial Intelligence for Medical
Epidemiology (AIME), a health analytics com-
pany that leverages on new technology such as
data analytics and artificial intelligence (AI).
“Globally, after a drop in 2017 and 2018, a
sharp increase in cases have been observed in
2019. In the Western Pacific region, increase
in cases were observed in Australia, Cambo-
dia, China, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Philippines,
Singapore, Vietnam while the serotypes DEN-
2 was reported in New Caledonia and DEN-1
in French Polynesia. Dengue outbreaks have
also been reported in Congo, Ivory Coast, Tan-
zania in the African region; several countries
of the American region have also observed an
increase in the number of cases. An estimated
500,000 people with severe dengue require