‘Malaysian breakthrough can help Philippines fight dengue’

MANILA, Philippines — The Philippines can learn a lot from Southeast Asian neighbor Malaysia, which has made an unprecedented move to help suppress if not totally eradicate the presence of the dreaded dengue virus, an administration lawmaker said yesterday.

“We understand that Malaysia has brought in the Wolbachia bacteria, which retards the dengue virus in the Aedes mosquito and lessens the risk of the disease getting passed on to humans,” Anakalusugan party-list Rep. Mike Defensor said.

The vice chairman of the House of Representatives’ committee on health pointed out that just like the Philippines, Malaysia is also dealing with a surge of the dengue virus.

Defensor said Malaysia has been “deploying new eggs” of the Aedes Wolbachia in “target areas to supplant some of the wild day-biting Aedes mosquito population carrying the dengue virus, in an aggressive bid to reduce human cases by 50 to 70 percent.”

Kuala Lumpur listed a total 118,416 dengue cases from Jan. 1 to Nov. 27 – up by 70 percent – and 164 deaths, up by 39 percent.

In comparison, Manila’s Department of Health recorded a total of 402,694 dengue cases from Jan. 1 to Nov. 16, up by 92 percent from the 209,335 listed in the same period last year.

The number of deaths also went up by 40 percent from 1,075 last year to 1,502 this year.

“We have to review the National Dengue Prevention and Control Program, which clearly has been unsuccessful in reducing the overall burden of the disease,” the former presidential chief of staff said.

Defensor pointed out that when the program was last updated, the Philippines had an annual average of only 185,008 dengue cases and 732 deaths over a five-year period.

“It is very likely that mosquitos are breeding at alarming rates due to harsh climate change,” said Defensor, who was secretary of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources during the time of former president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

A Georgetown University Medical Center study previously warned that “as many as a billion people could be newly exposed to disease-carrying mosquitoes by the end of the century because of global warming.”