Macao might be at high risk of experiencing dengue outbreak this year, given the rising numbers of infections both in the city and neighboring regions, the Macao Daily Times reported on Sunday, quoting a local health official assaying.
The condition of the disease this year was "not optimistic" and "there will be a high possibility" that dengue fever might develop into an epidemic during the periods between June and August, said Cheang Seng Ip, vice director of the Macao Special Administrative Region government's Health Bureau (SSM).
Dengue fever is an acute febrile viral disease characterized by sudden onset, fever, intense headache and the like, and the dengue viruses are transmitted to man by the bite of infective mosquitoes, mainly Aedesaegypti, according to a dengue report by the WHO (World Health Organization).
Cheang said the number of these mosquitoes being detected in Macao has been on the rise since 2006, and the situations of neighboring regions in Southeast Asia, where the fever was prevalent, was severe this year.
There were 14 reported cases in Macao last year, of which only one local resident was infected with the disease, while the others were imported workers from Hong Kong and the Chinese Mainland and tourists from Vietnam, Myanmar and the Philippines, the daily said.
Dengue fever was an "endemic disease" in Asian regions and has long existed in Southeast Asian nations, said Cheung So Mui, deputy president of the SAR government's Civic and Municipal Affairs Bureau (IACM).
At the end of 2001, Macao saw its first dengue outbreak, in which a total of 1,418 cases were reported within two months, according to the daily.
Over the past seven years, the SAR government has been progressively carrying out preventive and promotional measures in a bid to avoid another large-scale outbreak from happening, Cheung added.
WHO has estimated that about 40 percent of the world population were at risk of dengue fever infections, and over 50 million such infections were reported annually, which was also a leading cause of childhood mortality in several Asian countries.
Source: Xinhua
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