Dengue cases to Rise in Philippines Due to Rain, Says WHO Expert

The number of dengue cases in the Philippines will continue to rise in the coming months as intermittent rain continues during the wet season, a World Health Organisation (WHO) expert said.

“We all know that the rain is going to continue a few more months and we are expecting the number of dengue cases to increase maybe one to three months more,” Gawrie Galappaththy, a

WHO medical expert specialising in vector-borne parasitic diseases, told Xinhua in an interview.

She said scarcity of water during the dry season and the intermittent rain during the rainy season have resulted in dengue cases outbreak. Dengue is a mosquitoborne viral infection found in tropical countries worldwide. She said the El Nino dry spell that ravaged the Philippines starting in March has also contributed to the rise of dengue cases in the country.

“There was the scarcity of water. People collect water in containers where the mosquitos breed, and then the rainy season came,” she said.

Ms Galappaththy said dengue cases are increasing not only in the Philippines but also in many countries in the Asia-Pacific region, including Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam. The number of dengue cases in the Philippines has surged to 208,917 from January to August 10 this year with 882 deaths, the Department of Health of the Philippines said recently.

The number is more than double the cases recorded in the same period last year, the DOH said.

The Philippines recorded 102,298 dengue cases with 540 deaths in 2018.