Hsieh fights against contenders, dengue

Incumbent Kaohsiung City Mayor Frank Hsieh rides a tandem bicycle with a colleague last week. Hsieh is defending his administration's record on controlling dengue fever which has become a major issue in his reelection campaign. PHOTO: CHANG CHUNG-YI, TAIPEI TIMES

Kaohsiung City Mayor Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) probably never thought that dengue fever would become a serious issue in his reelection campaign.

Kaohsiung officially reported the year's first confirmed case in June.

Even now, officials in Hsieh's camp do not think the disease will be a major issue in the campaign.

"The situation is not that bad. At present, less than 10 cases on average are reported from 463 boroughs of the city every week," Lin Yun-chien (林永堅), deputy mayor and secretary-general of Hsieh's camp, told the Taipei Times Saturday.

Lin's however, conflicts with Cabinet health and environmental officials' assessment of dengue in Kaohsiung.

The outbreak, the most serious in Taiwan in 14 years, is expected by health authorities weeks ago to renew the historical record in November.

According to government statistics, 4,389 Taiwanese people contracted dengue fever in 1988.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, as of Friday, 4,358 confirmed cases, including 2,234 in Kaohsiung City, Taiwan's second-largest city, have been reported.

Meanwhile, there have been 118 confirmed cases of dengue hemorrhagic fever, resulting in 13 confirmed deaths.

Dengue broke out in Taiwan island-wide in 1915, 1931, and 1942. The infection did not reappear until the early 80s. Symptoms of the infection, which is seldom deadly, are similar to a severe case of influenza, but dengue hemorrhagic fever is a potentially fatal complication.

This year, 98 percent of confirmed cases are from three jurisdictions in southern Taiwan. In Kaohsiung's adjacent jurisdictions, Kaohsiung County and Pingtung County, 1,799 cases and 217 cases have been reported respectively as of Friday.

To assess the disease's progress, acting head of the Department of Health (DOH), Twu Shiing-jer (涂醒哲), inspected southern Taiwan Thursday.

Twu that the situation in Kaohsiung County was under control, while that in Kaohsiung City and Pingtung County remained troublesome.

Lin the Taipei Times that the city government had tried its best to fight the disease by adopting strategies, including dispersing insecticides to kill mosquito larvae, publicly promoting efforts to wipe out breeding sites for mosquitoes, disinfecting empty buildings and unoccupied apartments and distributing thousands of endemic Macropodus opercularis (蓋斑鬥魚) -- also known as the Paradise fish -- to residents.

According to recent government-sponsored researches, the fish preys on mosquito larvae more effectively than other fish.

Early October, Taipei County Commissioner Su Chen-chang (蘇貞昌), Hsieh's party comrade, donated thousands of the fish to help Hsieh fight the mosquito population. Unfortunately, all the fish were poisoned only days after it was raised in a pool in downtown Kaohsiung.

In one of Hsieh's new books, The Sun Rises in the South (日出南方), the frustrated mayor wrote that the death of the fish was politically motivated, implying that the last thing his opponents wanted to see was for him to succeed in controlling the disease.

As for the disease, Hsieh attributed its spread to several factors, including higher temperatures last winter, heavy rains this year, the health department's slow confirmation process when dealing with suspected cases and the public's lack of knowledge about the disease.

Hsieh, however, said in his book that he should be responsible for the mosquito's resistance to the pesticides that the city uses.

"I admit that [the mosquitoes resistance] did delay our ability to decrease the mosquito population," Hsieh wrote.

Hsieh to eradicate dengue fever within two years because he had learned a lot from past experience.

The city government announced last week that everyone must spend a half-hour before and after work every Tuesday to help wipe out breeding sites for the mosquitoes that spread dengue fever.

The spread of dengue fever in Kaohsiung frustrates Hsieh but gives ammunition to his competitors.

Independent Shih Ming-teh (施明德) said that Hsieh's attempts to cover up the spread of the disease by making excuses and questioning opponents would not prevent infection.

Shihis alone in this view. To highlight the mayoral incumbent's lax efforts, volunteers for independent candidate Chang Po-ya (張博雅) -- who served as the head of the DOH from 1990 to 1997 -- hung a huge model of the Aedes aegypti, the mosquito that spreads the dengue virus Saturday during a press conference in downtown Kaohsiung.

Friday, at a campaign activity organized for labor supporters, Chang said academic researchers suggested that the real number of dengue fever cases could be ten times the official record, implying that more than 20,000 residents were suffering from the disease.

"Shame on the city government! Kaohsiung residents' relatives who live elsewhere are reluctant to visit because of the disease," Chang said, implying that the disease had already become an obstacle to the city's development.

During an interview with the Taipei Times last week, Chang said that Hsieh had been very irresponsible because he was dodging the problem by crying foul.

"The criticism of Hsieh's failure to prevent dengue has been labeled as political ploy by Hsieh's camp. How can Kaohsiung residents benefit from this attitude?" Chang asked.

Chang, who holds a Master's degree in public health from the Johns Hopkins University, stressed that wiping out breeding grounds was crucial to eradicating mosquitoes.

"If I head the city government, every month I will organize a day of action against dengue and slow the growth of mosquito populations," Chang said.

As the number of dengue fever cases began increasing sharply during the summer, KMT candidate Huang Jun-ying (黃俊英), Hsieh's major opponent, noticed a dramatic drop in hotel room reservations.

According to Huang, the Grand Hotel sitting on the outskirts of the city lost 20 percent of its summer business and the net earnings of a popular youth hostel near Cheng Ching Lake (澄清湖) this summer was NT$2 million less than last year's summer earnings.

"You can't deny the link between the disease and the drop inlocal tourism," Cheng Shih-shi (鄭世熙), spokesman of Huang's camp, told the Taipei Times.

Reportedly, beginning this week, the city government is not going to update the number of reported dengue fever cases.

"If so, how is the city government going to keep the public informed about the disease?" Cheng asked.

Huang yesterday that if he heads the city government, he would establish notification systems on dengue fever soon to keep the public informed.