Twenty Villages in Nganjuk Are Dengue fever Endemic

Nganjuk, East Java - A total of 20 villages in Nganjuk district, East Java, is currently dengue fever endemic, local chief of disease prevention and environmental health at the health department, Sugeng Budi Wiyono, said here on Wednesday. Sugeng said that to prevent the disease from spreading, the local government authorities were actively cleaning up the breeding grounds of aedes aegepty mosquito. "We found that many people both adults and children in 20 villages have been infected by dengue fever," Sugeng said, adding that since the past two weeks 10 of 14 victims have been tested dengue fever positive. But he said that luckily there was no immediate report of fatality so far. Sugeng expressed hope that the number dengue cases this year could be lower than that in previous years when in 2010 there were 494 dengue victims with 3 fatalities while in 2011 the number dropped to 79 with also three fatalities. According to him, Nganjuk health department continued to make every effort to anticipate the spread of dengue fever by actively conducted fogging.(*)