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Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Malaysia : Five dengue deaths last week, bringing year's toll to 52

Based on the article from The Star, besides H1N1, we have another disease which we need to battle with. Malaysia being a tropical country has long battled dengue and sometimes we are winning the battle but at times we tend to lose them too.

" Five people have died from dengue in the week between April 11 and Saturday.

Two of the five deaths occured in the Federal Territories of Kuala Lumpur and Putrajaya, two in Selangor and one in Kelantan.

Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Ismail Merican said the deaths were due to the complications, either from dengue haemorrhagic fever or dengue shock syndrome.

Four of the deaths, he added, occured in either areas with dengue epidemic or high breeding rate of aedes mosquitoes.

Dr Ismail said the rising trend of dengue deaths was worrying as monitoring showed that only 15 out of the 52 deaths this year had been diagnosed as dengue fever before the patients were admitted to hospitals.

"This shows that there are still cases where there is a delay in diagnosis although the patients come early for treatment," he said.

He said there were 886 dengue cases reported in that week, an increase of 28 cases compared to the previous week."

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