Hanoi implements large-scale environmental sanitation to prevent dengue fever

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The campaign will be maintained regularly until September 4.

Currently, dengue fever is increasing rapidly across the city, with an increased number of infections over the same period in 2016 and seven deaths have been recorded.

Inspecting the work of environmental sanitation and dengue fever prevention in Quang Trung ward, Ha Dong district, Deputy Chairman of Hanoi People's Committee Ngo Van Quy acknowledged that dengue fever control measures have been taken seriously.

Local people have joined together with the functional forces to clean the environment, clear bushes and cover water tanks to avoid mosquito reproduction. Propaganda work on dengue fever prevention has been strengthened to cover each household, while the spraying of mosquito killing chemicals has been deployed on a large scale.

Hanoi authorities inspect environmental hygiene work aimed at preventing the spread of dengue fever in Quang Trung ward, Ha Dong district, August 12.

To spray effectively, the city is implementing a focused spraying, with concentration on several districts with a large numbers of dengue fever infections. Especially during the peak period of the epidemic, in September, the city will focus on deploying environmental sanitation work and larval killing in all districts.

Until August 17, the city will strive to finish the larva killing campaign in all districts, before deploying two other campaigns in the coming days, while intensifying inspections and applying sanctioning measures against units and individuals that fail to perform environmental sanitation and dengue fever prevention.

Conducting an inspection at Ha Dong General Hospital, Deputy Chairman Quy requested that the hospital prepare sufficient facilities, medicine and staff to meet the treatment requirements, as well as actively preventing dengue fever through sanitation activities.

He proposed that the Hanoi Department of Health create favourable conditions for local hospitals in supplementing equipment, especially testing devices, to quickly return test results to patients and ensure adequate funding for dengue fever prevention.

Ha Dong district carries out a sanitation campaign on August 12. (Credit: NDO)

Ha Dong district ranks fifth in the highest number of patients detected with dengue fever in Hanoi, after Dong Da, Hai Ba Trung, Thanh Xuan and Hoang Mai districts. Since the beginning of the year, the district has had 938 infections and 171 outbreaks. Currently, only 96 cases are being treated in local hospitals, the remaining patients have been cured, with no fatalities.

To prevent a widespread outbreak, Ha Dong has deployed a range of preventive measures, focusing on promoting propaganda work to each household and mobilising the relevant forces to kill larvae.

The district hosts 1,134 larvae-killing mobile teams and hundreds of surveillance missions. The district has mobilised social resources to intensify spraying machines and provide instructions on how to properly spray the chemicals, as well as inspecting epidemic prevention, organising environmental sanitation and spraying mosquito-killing chemicals on a large scale, especially in high risk areas.

According to the Head of Hanoi’s Health Department Nguyen Khac Hien, together with the organisation of inspection teams for dengue fever prevention, the department will also check the classification of patients in hospitals: severely ill patients will be treated in hospitals, while patients with minor illness will be transferred to local clinics in order to avoid overloading at hospitals that could cause difficulties in monitoring the source of infection.

In previous years, on average, there were only 5,000-6,000 dengue fever cases in Hanoi each year; in 2009 alone the number of infections increased to 16,000 with four deaths and almost 15,500 in 2015. This year, despite not reaching the peak period yet, the number of infections has reached nearly 13,000, with seven deaths.

From August 14 to the end of the month, the Hanoi Centre for Preventive Medicine will focus on spraying chemicals in Dong Da and Hai Ba Trung districts, along with a number of wards in Ba Dinh and Hoan Kiem districts.