‘Cross-border collaboration’ to stop Dengue spread — WHO

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MANILA – The World Health Organization is looking at pushing for a “cross-border” collaboration to prevent the mosquito-borne disease from spreading.

“Through such cross-border collaboration and sharing of dengue information, timely sensing of the dengue situation can improve preparedness within each country in the event of an outbreak,” the WHO said.

Affecting more than 100 countries worldwide, the WHO is considering to build regional capacity through collaboration among countries in order to minimize, if not totally eliminate, the effects of dengue outbreak.

“Not only is the number of cases increasing as the disease spreads to new areas, but frequent explosive outbreaks are occurring,” the WHO said.

An estimated 50-100 million dengue infections was reported by the organization to have been recurring worldwide every year.

The figure also has been dramatically increasing with only nine articles affected by sever dengue epidemics in 1970 to more than 100 countries reported recently.

Last year, a total of 428,635 cases and 964 dengue deaths were reported by the member states of the Western Pacific region.

In the Philippines, dengue cases reach over 204,906 cases and 660 deaths last year.

“Dengue hinders progress, which prevents our people from enjoying quality life.

It is therefore imperative that we pool our considerable resources together to rid our region of dengue,” WHO regional director for Western Pacific Shin Young-soo said.