The dengue fever epidemic in Tainan appears to be waning, but the disease has been spreading more quickly in Kaohsiung, and lawmakers and other politicians continue to prioritize partisanship and electioneering over the management of a public health issue.
The Central Epidemic Command Center on Thursday said it would refocus its efforts from Tainan to Kaohsiung, where hundreds of new cases continue to be reported daily. Almost in tandem, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers and city councilors shifted the focus of their criticism from the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) Tainan Mayor William Lai (賴清德) to Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊). The complaint in both cities is that the mayor should focus on the city instead of helping DPP Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) campaign for president.
The prediction by the head of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in early September that the dengue outbreak would run its course by the end of that month proved to be ludicrously overconfident. Just one week later, the agency was forced to backtrack and admit that the outbreak was not only more serious, but it was unlikely to ease until January, by which time it expected the number of cases nationwide to total between 30,000 and 37,000. As of Wednesday, the total number of cases since May 1 stood at 35,345 — more than double last year’s total by more than 3,000 cases. So it seems likely that by January, the total number of cases could exceed 37,000.
The central government was caught flat-footed by this year’s outbreak, and reducing epidemic-fighting efforts to a political issue bodes ill for future public health initiatives to combat the disease. That is a worry, because many experts believe that this year’s outbreak is just the harbinger of things to come.
Dengue fever is found in almost every nation in subtropical Asia. Taiwan has always had cases, but there have only been a few years when the outbreaks reached more than 1,000 to 2,000 cases — until last year. Around Asia, the number of dengue fever cases has grown over the past four decades because of population growth, the increase in migration from rural to urban areas and warmer temperatures.
Taiwan is not the only place to see more cases than usual this year. According to Asian Scientist magazine, there has been a similar outbreak in China’s Guangdong Province, where the number of cases since the start of the year is more than 10 times last year’s total, while India has seen a five-year high in the number of cases; more than 20,000 as of September.
Former CDC director and dengue fever expert Su Yi-jen (蘇益仁) in September said that global warming and international travel have led to the disease moving slowly northward and it could cross the Tropic of Cancer in a decade or two. He also said that efforts to combat the disease require the combined efforts of experts from a variety of fields, and urged the government to establish a dengue fever research and prevention center, just as it did years ago to combat malaria.
At the beginning of this month, the CDC announced it had taken a best practice from Singapore and developed an online dengue fever cluster map showing where cases have been reported. A worrying note buried in the centers’ announcement was that the development of the map was the first time the agency had cooperated with the Ministry of the Interior to use its spatial statistical area and classification system and big data analysis.
Interagency coordination should not be a novelty when it comes to public health issues; nor should political cooperation. The lessons learned from this year’s dengue fever outbreak should be applied to ensure that future epidemics are tackled more quickly.
Unfortunately, Taiwan’s track record for handling disasters and the nation’s political system almost ensures that this will not be the case.
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