Monday, August 16, 2010

Dengue Hemorrhagic Fever


Rainy season is here again.. and so are the diseases like dengue fever.


Simply speaking dengue fever (dengue hemorrhagic fever) is a mosquito borne flavi-virus that is endemic in the Philippines. One can get this if he is bitten by infected female aedes aegypti mosquitoes, they are the carrier of the virus. The mosquitoes generally acquire the virus by feeding on the blood of an infected person. After virus incubation of eight to ten days, the mosquito now can transmit the virus to humans for the rest of it's life. It is also proven that female mosquitoes can transmit the virus to their eggs thru transovarial. Infected humans are the source of virus and multipliers for the uninfected mosquitoes. The virus circulates about two to seven days on the person's body, it is at this point also that they have fever and at the same time the mosquitoes may acquire this virus also once they feed into their blood.

The symptoms include sudden onset of fever, which may seem like a severe kind of flu-like illness, with muscle pains, pain behind eyes and joints and rashes.

Dengue as per WHO is a potentially deadly complication that is characterized by high fever, often with enlargement of the liver and circulatory failure. In severe cases patients condition may severely deteriorates in a few days of fever, followed by temperature drop and circulatory failure and may die in a period of 12 to 48 hours, if not given the proper medical attention and treatment.

There is no vaccine yet for dengue although there is an ongoing study. It is still not proven that the transovarial transfer made by female mosquitoes to their eggs are the sustaining transmission of the virus to humans. Still it's the human who is the primary and principal carrier of the virus.

With this what we need to do is prevention. Let us always keep our households and surroundings clean. We should not allow areas that will be conducive to the mosquitoes reproduction, like stagnant waters. And let us kill mosquitoes mercilessly when we see them, let's not give them chances to spread the virus.

3 comments:

Mommy Liz said...

Dengue fever can kill if left untreated. My oldest son had H-fever (same as dengue fever way back 1994) and he could've died if we waited another half a day before taking him to the hospital and he was only 2 1/2 months old during that time. His platelet count went down to 50, and he needed over 300. he had blood transfusion twice before his platelet count got stabilized. His blood was infected bad. anyways, he survived with God's help and now 16 years old and ang tamad tamad, grrr! hehehe..

jennie said...

haha.. ganyan talaga pag ganyang age.. hehe

God is still good! ♥

redamethyst said...

ingatz ingat lang talaga parati. prevention rather than cure.
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