HANOI, Aug. 19 (Xinhua) -- Vietnam has so far detected over 90,600 cases of dengue fever infections this year including 24 fatalities, increasing over 60 percent and 41 percent, respectively against the same period last year, the country's Preventive Medicine Department said on Saturday.
Since the beginning of this year, the capital city of Hanoi has detected 17,365 dengue fever patients, including seven fatalities, and 85 percent of them have been discharged from hospital, according to the latest statistics from the municipal Health Department.
Due to widespread chemical-spraying and environment-cleansing campaigns in Hanoi, the number of dengue fever infections is decreasing everyday, the Health Department said, noting that it dropped from 3,076 on Aug. 14 to 2,635 on Aug. 15, and 2,588 on Aug. 16.
Most of dengue fever patients will fully recover after few days without having to be hospitalized, but few can suffer from complications which may lead to health deterioration, even death.
The current percentage of dengue fever patients who suffer from serious complications is 0.06 percent in Hanoi, 0.3 percent in Vietnam's central region and 2.8 percent in the southern region, according to the statistics from the country's health ministry.
On Saturday, many mobile phone subscribers in Hanoi received text messages from telecommunications giant VinaPhone which call for people to apply four measures to prevent dengue fever infections, namely avoiding being bitten by mosquitos, actively cleansing up waste and killing larvae, coordinating with healthcare facilities during the process of spaying mosquito-killing chemicals, and coming to the nearest medical establishments for consultation, checkup or treatment when showing dengue fever symptoms.
The ministry's Preventive Medicine Department also called for people nationwide to actively to cleanse breeding grounds of mosquitos, and use mosquito nets when sleeping.
Both healthy people and dengue fever patients should use mosquito nets when sleeping because mosquitos can bite the patients, carry the dengue virus and transmit it to healthy people through bites, or transfer the virus to their eggs and then their larvae.
