Fogging operations are among the preventive measures against dengue to be implemented in schools and barangays if necessary. | Inquirer photo
CEBU CITY, Philippines — The Cebu City Health Office plans to coordinate with the Department of Education (DepEd) and the barangays for their anti-dengue campaigns in schools and the barangays.
This is amid the Department of Health’s declaration last August 6 that dengue is now a national epidemic.
Read more: Dengue in Cebu City: Mayor Labella holds off declaration of state of calamity
Dr. Daisy Villa, City Health officer, said she would write the schools division superintendent of Cebu City so that they would be allowed to conduct information drives to students, search and destroy breeding sites of dengue-carrying mosquitoes, and misting operations.
Villa stressed the need of the anti-dengue drives in schools because of the importance of protecting students, whose bodies are more susceptible to the risk of death by dengue because of their weaker immune systems as compared to most of the grownups.
She said that the schools would need to be cleansed of possible breeding sites of dengue-carrying mosquitoes so that these insects would not have a chance to spread the disease.
Read more: Vice Mayor Rama: Comprehensive approach against dengue needed in Cebu City
For the barangays, Villa has already formed a dengue task force that is made up of the city’s sanitary inspectors, who will be assigned to implement anti-dengue measures in the city’s villages.
She said that members of the task force would be deployed in the barangays to conduct search and destroy of the mosquitoes breeding sites and recommend misting of fogging of the area if necessary.
She also said that she was hoping that the city government could provide vehicles to the dengue task force so that they could move faster in the barangays especially since they could not yet rely on the barangay health workers, who had yet to be fully activated by the city government.
”For the barangay health workers, we were not able to tap them yet because we are still waiting for their accomplishment reports. We need to have to get these reports to make sure the workers were doing their jobs before we can deploy them again,” said Villa.
In the meantime, members of the task force had been deployed to inspect the barangays and check or prevent the spread of dengue there.
Aside from this, Villa is also asking the public to help them in their anti-dengue campaign by cleaning their own homes and their surroundings as a deterrent from the dengue-carrying mosquitoes./dbs