Weather shifts could trigger disease outbreaks

The
HCM City Preventive Health Centre has warned that the unseasonable rains in the
city since the Lunar New Year could see more people hospitalised with dengue
fever; hand, foot, and mouth; respiratory ailments; and diarrhoea.

Dr
Nguyen Tri Dung, the centre’s head, said people should take preventive measures
like destroying mosquitoes and larvae and maintaining personal hygiene.

Statistics
released by the Paediatrics Hospital 2’s infectious diseases ward on February 6
showed that 22 dengue patients are receiving treatment, double the number
compared to the same period last year.

Of
them, four are in the serious condition, including a child who is on a
ventilator.

According
to Dr Le Tien Dung of the University Medical Centre, when the
suddenly, viral fever and pneumonia often break out, with children, seniors and
people with low immunity especially at risk.

Tran
Minh Dien, deputy head of the National Hospital of Paediatrics in Hanoi, told Tuoi
Tre (Youth) newspaper that the weather this year had been “strange.”

Normally
after Tet the weather in the north is humid, he said, pointing out that this
year temperatures had been quite high at night and low in the morning.
“The difference in temperature is high, leading to increased risk of
respiratory diseases,” he said.

On
February 6 his hospital admitted 1,300 patients, many of them with respiratory
diseases, he said.

Dr
Nguyen Thanh Nam, head of the paediatrics ward at another Hanoi hospital, Bach Mai,
said on February 6 the ward was filled with children, half of them with
respiratory ailments.

There
were also children with chickenpox, which often breaks out during the transition
from winter to spring, he said.

The
Hanoi Preventive Health Centre warned that mumps, measles, rubella and other
diseases could break out.

Nam
advised that parents should raise resistance for their children by feeding them
sufficient nutrition, keeping them warm and in the hygiene condition in order
to prevent from infecting diseases via respiratory tract.

They
also should bring their children to health facilities to get vaccines against
chickenpox, mumps, measles and others.-VNA