Cough, colds mostly recorded in evacuation centers – DOH

CEBU, Philippines - Central Visayas region is now under code white, as yesterday declared by Department of Health-7.

This, according to assistant regional director Lakshmi Legaspi and Health Emergency Management Staff chief Expedito Medalla, after typhoon Ruby monitoring and assessment of evacuation centers in the entire region have ended.

Code Red was raised shortly before the landfall Saturday, which was downgraded to Code Blue earlier this week and further down to Code White yesterday.

As HEMS conducted Rapid Health Assessment   among reported evacuation centers in the region, their Surveillance of Post Extreme Emergency Disaster   has found that of the 50 evacuation centers in Cebu and Bohol provinces, cough and colds top the number of medical cases recorded.

The evacuation centers that sent SPEED reports include Cebu City (18 centers), Talisay City (12 centers), Minglanilla (2 centers), Naga City (3 centers), Ubay, Bohol (11 centers), and Pitogo, Bohol (4 centers).

HEMS personnel Harvi Durangparang said their data did not cover all evacuation centers as some centers were already terminated when RHA teams got to the area.

Also, SPEED reporting is done 48 hours from encampment of an evacuation center.  Evacuation centers that operated less than 48 hours were not covered.

Of the 1,334 total cases of medical conditions recorded, cough and colds comprised the majority at 669.  Of the 353 under five years old cases of cough and colds, Cebu province got 285 while Bohol got 68.

For the 316 cases of cough and colds of over five-year old evacuees, 255 were from Cebu province while the remaining 61 were from Bohol.

“Our report is based on our RHA. We monitor the consultations done inside the evacuation centers. We had a very bad experience during typhoon Ondoy. We had medical consultations inside the evacuation centers but the data was not collated on cases per center. It turned out that there were already outbreaks of leptospirosis. It was declared by WHO (World Health Organization) as one of the worst leptospirosis outbreaks in history. This was why we formulated the SPEED,” Medalla explained.

Meanwhile, the HEMS chief reiterated their stand on classifying the two deaths in Bogo and Malabuyoc as typhoon-related despite other authorities insisting these to be otherwise.

“If I were to decide, those deaths were typhoon-related because it happened during the typhoon. Hypothermia and electrocution are caused by typhoon,” Medalla said.

He, nevertheless, stressed that two is already a very good casualty rate considering Cebu is a big province with islands and islets.  (FREEMAN)