Saturday, December 11, 2010

Vietnam: Diseases break out in southern region

Saturday ,Dec 11,2010, Posted at: 16:50(GMT+7)

The number of children and the elderly infected with respiratory diseases, dengue fever and cholera has soared in Ho Chi Minh City and southern provinces.

For a short period, there was a lull in these diseases, however, lately; they have come back in force.

At the HCMC Children Hospital No.1, the respiratory department has been overwhelmed with 200-230 children a day. There are only 100 sick beds in the hospital, and several children have been treated for pneumonia, bronchitis and asthma.

In addition, the number of children hospitalsed is also on the rise, and most of them come from the Mekong Delta.

Similarly, in the HCMC Children Hospital No.2, respiratory and digestion departments are overcrowded with sick children. The hospital has treated at least 3,000 children a day, several of them suffering from respiratory and digestion diseases.

A doctor said that on average, he treats about 60 to 70 children a day, but now it is over 100 children a day.

The Pasteur Institute in the city said that since the beginning of the year, the southern region has been infected with over 64,800 patients suffering from dengue fever, with 65 people dying from this disease.

The dengue fever spread to 16 of 20 provinces and cities in the region. Furthermore, An Giang, Ben Tre, Binh Duong and Dong Thap provinces have seen an increase in the number of patient dying from the disease.

Every week in HCMC over 500 people are hospitalized due to dengue fever and that is an increase of 50 percent over the same period last year.

In addition, recently a child has died and two others hospitalized for cholera in the Binh Chanh District of HCMC.

Nguyen Dac Tho, deputy director of HCMC Preventive Medicine Center, said “that the polluted environment around accommodation areas have triggered the disease”.

To cope with the outbreak, the HCMC Department of Health has ordered relevant organizations to implement stricter health measures to prevent any more disease from spreading, especially cholera.

The department has also instructed the district authorities to warned residents about the dangers of poor food hygiene, particularly using water from contaminated sources, thereby contributing to water-born diseases.

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