Mosquito-borne dengue fever raised the death toll to 44 in
the first four months of 2007 in Malaysia, more than double since
last year’s report, officials said Monday.
Since last year, the government has been fighting the dengue
outbreak in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia capital, as well as the
neighboring state of Selangor.
"The bulk of deaths were in Selangor and Kuala Lumpur," said
the health ministry's spokesman Lee Kah Choon.
"The present weather is conducive for mosquitoes to
breed. So, the people must take steps to ensure that their surroundings are
free of rubbish at all times," Lee said, quoted by the Star daily.
Compared with this year’s statistics, the first four months
of 2006 recorded 21 deaths caused by dengue, he added. The country saw 900
suspected dengue cases last week, a record high this year, Lee said. The state
of Selangor alone reported over 200 cases last week, followed by Kuala Lumpur and Pinang, he told local reporters in Pinang
after launching a health campaign in the capital city of Malaysia's northern state of Pinang.
Lee said health officials will continue conducting checks on
residential and commercial properties in high-risk areas, adding that members
of the public needed to work with authorities to ensure their premises were not
breeding grounds for the virus-carrying aedes mosquito.
Meanwhile, 180 new cases of dengue were reported last week
in Singapore,
reaching an all-time high since 2005, when the disease hit epidemic proportion.
Some 1,500 dengue cases were reported for the first 19 weeks of this year in Singapore, some
50 percent more than last year’s same period.
"There are four strains in dengue. For many years, Singapore's is
largely dengue 1, although dengue 2 is quite common in our neighbours. I was in
Indonesia
recently and I asked them, what's your most common strain and they said dengue
2. So that's the trouble. Within our region, there are different kinds of
strains, so presumably, somebody must have brought the virus into Singapore and
from there it just spreads," said Health Minister Khaw Boon Wan.
No one in Singapore
has died from dengue so far this year.
Symptoms of dengue are high fever and rashes. If not
detected and treated early, the disease can be fatal.
