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BANGKOK POST :
Doctors want dengue
cooperation
Dengue experts, who are attending a World Health Organisation (WHO) meeting in Singapore to chart a roadmap to
tackle dengue, agreed that regional collaboration is key
to the success of dengue prevention.
According to Channel NewsAsia
reports on Thursday, the WHO said the frequency of dengue outbreaks is
increasing and spreading, with Asian countries experiencing such outbreaks
every three to five years.
Experts said Singapore is a good example of a country
that has successfully controlled the mosquito population. Just 3,100 dengue
cases were reported in Singapore last year, dropping significantly from the previous
year's number of 14,200, thanks to the dengue prevention campaign launched by
the government.
"We need dengue control as part of public health
policy. So before you start (any) development activity, you should be aware
of the public health concerns," Jai P. Narain, director of communicable
diseases in WHO Southeast Asia Regional Office, was quoted as saying.
"So all these different measures have to be put in place. So this is
what we are trying to do in the strategic plan. We have a framework for the
whole region to be applied uniformly in different countries," he added.
Experts from some member countries, including Singapore,
Thailand, India and Tonga, are meeting over the next few days until Saturday
to work out a strategic plan for the region, the report said.
Singapore's National Environment Agency is hosting the
WHO meeting to chart a roadmap to improve their ability to tackle the
disease.
The participating countries come from a core group of
the Asia-Pacific Dengue Partnership created by the WHO last year.
More
Info…
THE STRAITS TIMES
(SINGAPORE) :
Regional battle
plan to fight dengue soon
Core group
including Singapore working on framework to beef up collaboration
DENGUE experts and government officials from the
Asia-Pacific are in Singapore - and they have wasted no time in acting on
this 'most important emerging tropical disease'.
The World Health Organisation
(WHO) is leading the regional battle plan to combat and control the disease.
By tomorrow, a core group, which includes Singapore,
India, Thailand and Tonga, hopes to have a framework in place for the
Asia-Pacific Dengue Partnership to try and strengthen collaboration on the
disease.
Dr Jai Narain, communicable diseases director for WHO's South-east Asia
regional office, said the framework will touch on three key areas:
prevention; case management, including trying to reduce case fatality to less
than 1 per cent; and monitoring and early forecasting.
The partnership was set up in March last year in
response to what dengue expert Duane Gubler of the
University of Hawaii observes as an emergent disease spreading to new
geographic areas and whose frequency of outbreaks is on the upswing. 'To take
a hard look at what we have done wrong and right is critical. Dengue has to
be recognised for what it is. It has a tremendous
social and economic impact that is not often appreciated,' he said. The
approach needs to be a regional and not just on the country level, he added,
because even if a country did an 'outstanding job' in controlling its
problem, it would be useless if it sits in a 'sea of epidemics'.
The problems: some countries which have not allocated
enough resources to put into place public health infrastructure to deal with
dengue or to develop vaccines, or invested enough in training people. If
other countries have a problem, so would Singapore, Professor Gubler said, pointing to the thousands of migrant workers
who can bring in the disease, for instance.
Even those from non-dengue regions could cause
outbreaks, exacerbating the 'penalty' Singapore is already paying for its
effectiveness in dealing with dengue: the population has become more
susceptible to infections because of the loss of immunity.
Still, Singapore could be the example for good vector
control and case management methods, said Dr Narain.Dengue
cases here have fallen from 14,209 in 2005 to 3,126 last year. Dr Narain
said: 'It's not that we have to grope in the dark. But what we have to do is
to scale up, involving various sectors in the coming years.'
More Info…
PEOPLE'S DAILY :
Experts call for
Asia regional collaboration to tackle dengue
Dengue experts, who are attending a World Health
Organization (WHO) meeting here to chart a roadmap to tackle dengue, agreed
that regional collaboration is key to the success of
dengue prevention. According to Channel NewsAsia
reports on Thursday, the WHO said the frequency of dengue outbreaks is
increasing and spreading, with Asian countries experiencing such outbreaks
every three to five years. Experts said
Singapore is a good example of a country that has successfully controlled
the mosquito population. Just 3,100 dengue cases were reported in Singapore
last year, dropping significantly from the previous year's number of 14,200,
thanks to the dengue prevention campaign launched by the government.
"We need dengue control as part of public health
policy. So before you start (any) development activity, you should be aware
of the public health concerns," Jai P. Narain, director of communicable
diseases in WHO Southeast Asia Regional Office, was quoted as saying.
"So all these different measures have to be put in
place. So this is what we are trying to do in the strategic plan. We have a
framework for the whole region to be applied uniformly in different
countries," he added.
Experts from some member countries, including Singapore, Thailand,
India and Tonga, are
meeting over the next few days until Saturday to work out a strategic plan
for the region, the report said. The participating countries come from a core
group of the Asia-Pacific Dengue Partnership created by the WHO last year.
CHANNEL NEWSASIA :
WHO urges Asian
countries to improve infrastructure to tackle dengue
Asian countries need to improve their infrastructure to
prevent and manage outbreaks of dengue.
So Singapore's National Environment Agency is hosting a
World Health Organisation (WHO) meeting to chart a
roadmap to improve their ability to tackle the disease.
Dengue is a prevailing disease for the past two to three
decades in Southeast Asia and in the Western Pacific.The
WHO says the frequency of dengue outbreaks is increasing and spreading, with
Asian countries experiencing such outbreaks every three to five years.
The challenge is to help them adopt policies from
successful examples, like Singapore.
Dr Jai P Narain, Director, Communicable Diseases, WHO
Southeast Asia Regional Office, said, "We need dengue control as part of
public health policy. So before you start (any) development activity, you
should be aware of the public health concerns.
"So all these different measures have to be put in
place. So this is what we are trying to do in the strategic plan. We have a
framework for the whole region to be applied uniformly in different
countries."
Representatives from some member countries - including
Singapore, Thailand and India and Tonga - are meeting over the next few days
until Saturday to work out a strategic plan for the region.
It is felt that Asian countries are not investing enough
money in hospitals and there are not enough medical professionals to deal
with the disease. The participating countries make up the Asia-Pacific Dengue
Partnership, which was formed in March last year at a meeting in Chiang Mai,
Thailand. The countries come from WHO Regional Offices for Southeast Asia and
Western Pacific.
Advisors to the WHO say countries have failed to put
enough resources to develop vaccines. But it is difficult to develop a
vaccine that is effective against all types of dengue. So what one company is
doing is to develop an anti-viral drug, because it believes administering the
drug to the affected people is more cost effective than mass vaccination. And
even success stories, like Singapore's, may have a downside.
Professor D J Gubler,
Director, Institute of Asia-Pacific for Tropical Medicine & Tropical
Diseases, said, "Probably the success of the Singapore programme has resulted in the susceptibility in the
Singapore population. A lot of people in Singapore have not experienced
dengue and therefore are not immune to dengue and they're at a higher risk of
infection."
The meeting hopes to agree on a regional framework and
come up with a timetable to implement the ideas.
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