Children are treated for dengue fever in a hospital
Experts warned that this year's dengue epidemic has come early, people should raise their alert to the disease.
An upsurge in cases of dengue has been observed. The Ho Chi Minh City –based Children's Hospital 2 has just received a 5-year-old child from the Southern Province of Binh Duong who was hospitalized in a state of deep shock, respiratory failure, pulmonary and liver bleeding and requiring mechanical ventilation. Doctors diagnosed the child with severe dengue. After nearly 48 hours of dialysis, the patient died from multi-organ damage, on the background of obesity with the weight of 34kg despite doctors’ efforts to save him.
Elsewhere in the city, Associate Professor Pham Van Quang, Head of the Children's Hospital 1’s Intensive Care Unit, said that the hospital had just recorded a case of an 8-year-old boy whose heart stopped and stopped breathing before being admitted to the hospital. Doctors determined that the baby had severe dengue shock, multi-organ damage; therefore, doctors’ efforts to save him was unrewarded, said Dr. Pham Van Quang.
According to statistics of children's hospitals in the city, during the three recent weeks, the number of hospitalized children with complications from dengue fever has increased 2-3 times. Doctor Nguyen Minh Tien, deputy director of Ho Chi Minh City Children's Hospital, said that from the Lunar New Year until now, on average, the hospital receives about 100-150 children with dengue every day and 10 percent of them have been hospitalized for treatment.
Currently, the hospital's infection department is treating about 50-60 children, including children with severe disease, even some children who have both severe dengue and Covid-19. These children suffering dengue and Covid-19 are recorded mainly in obese children. The Children's Hospital 2 also recorded an increase in children hospitalized due to dengue in recent days, many children were hospitalized late when they experienced serious complications leading to a higher rate of serious cases than previous years.
Statistically, severe cases accounts for 20 percent – 30 percent; subsequently, the rate of dialysis is also higher then prior year, accounting for 2 percent-3 percent.
The HCMC-based Children's Hospital 1 announced that in the first three months of 2022, the number of children coming to the hospital for examination and hospitalization for dengue fever doubled compared to the same period last year. In the first two weeks of April, the number of hospitalized and critically ill children continued to increase.
Doctor Nguyen Dinh Quy from the Department of Infectious Diseases of the Children's Hospital 2, said that currently the rainy season begins in the southern provinces encouraging very high mosquito densities and is ideal for the transmission of dengue fever. Nevertheless, this year, dengue fever is different than every year as a child is hospitalized late.
Through taking medical history, doctors discovered that most parents are concerned about Covid-19 so they do not take their children to see a doctor. Parents just take their kids to a hospital until their children with signs of anaphylaxis, convulsions, even vomiting blood.
According to Dr. Nguyen Dinh Quy, parents should think about dengue fever in addition to Covid-19 if their children experienced a fever in this rainy season.
Above all, the doctors advised parents not to self-medicate children at home for too long until they become severe will be difficult to treat and have a high mortality rate.
According to the Center for Disease Control of Ho Chi Minh City (HCDC), dengue is endemic in Vietnam, especially the southern provinces, including Ho Chi Minh City; however, the peak period of dengue in the city is usually from the end of July to January next year and the peak of the epidemic may be in November and December in next year.
It is forecast that in the coming weeks the weekly number of dengue cases will continue to increase seasonally. Medical workers warned of the great risk of dengue outbreaks in the city without measures to kill mosquitoes and larvae.
