Halina Mohd Yunos

Dengue. Let’s End This!!

Hi all..

I had a bad ICU call few days ago. It was horrible. I was just mega-exhausted. Our ICU is 22 bedded, and one person taking care of 22 beds during on call is mad. Really.. It’s the Intensive Care Unit.. not the normal ward. if one patient collapsed is still do-able. But there was one time, I was on call, and I had 3 patients collapsed and needed CPR at the same time!! MashaAllah.. The angel of death must be really busy that night in the ICU..

Anyway, back to my on call story. My ill patient that night was a dengue patient.

Dengue nowadays are so much different. It’s getting more and more difficult to manage. They need ICU care just for dengue. At the place where I work, we even have a dengue ward. The load of dengue patient in the hospital is getting worse over time.. and mortality or death due to dengue fever has increased significantly. Since January 1, 2014 until now.. there’s already 22 people died of dengue!!

Yes, it’s because of this mosquito called Aedes Aegypti

Image from Google

If you happened to find this mosquito with black and white stripes on its legs. Kill it!!

Kill!!! Kill!! Kill!!!

If you can’t.. then run for your life!!

This Aedes mosquito is the carrier of flaviviruses. (Yes, dengue is a viral fever!), so, no antibiotic needed unless you have a secondary infection..

But seriously, all of us have to play part in helping to eradicate the mosquitos. When you use the mosquito spray, it only works on the adult mosquitos. But it doesn’t kill the mosquito eggs!! This is the part where you should ask me.. where does this mosquito eggs live?

The mosquito eggs live in stagnant water!! Yes, probably it’s in our flower vase, or the kolah air in our toilet, clogged drain, rooftop gutter or construction areas. Please, I know we can’t go and clean the construction area but at least what we can do at home is remove all stagnant water in our house / compound. Change the water in the flower vase everyday (yes, you heard me!!) Make sure the drain around your house is working well, no leaves or anything that can clog the water flow in the drain..

Aedes usually comes out twice a day, during dusk and dawn.. What I do at home, is to close all windows and doors early. And mosquito repellant to prevent mosquito bites. Sometimes the lotion repellant, sometimes the sticker repellant. For the toilet that we rarely use, I keep the toilet seat cover on, so the stagnant water in the toilet bowl won’t be the ground breed for this Aedes fella..

Typical symptoms of dengue is fever, bone pain (myalgia), joint pain (arthralgia), loss of appetite, common flu-like symptoms, headache and pain behind your eyes (retro-orbital pain).

The technology nowadays can even detect dengue at day one when you started to have fever. There’s a blood test called NS-1 to detect dengue virus in your body. Usually, during first of fever, your platelet count will not be so low. (Lucky there’s this NS-1 blood test that is very specific for dengue fever!). So, if you live in a prone-dengue area, and having dengue symptoms, get yourself check early.

Please, please, please..

Let’s do our part. Don’t let the mosquito breed easily. Enough people dying of this illness. Prevention is better than cure.

#MsiaEndsDengue

For more information on dengue and other health issues, you can follow @mimpatwt on Twitter or download their Malaysian Medical Gazette app on your iPhone and android.

Filed under: Mommyhood, Work Tagged: work

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