Print

Mail

wiki links

Five imported dengue fever cases confirmed

Four out of a group of five people who traveled to Vietnam earlier this month to broker a marriage between a Taiwanese man and a Vietnamese woman were confirmed to have been infected with dengue fever, the Department of Health (DOH) said on Friday.

Health officials said that the group was from Chiayi County and that a 50-year-old man was reported to have been infected last Tuesday.

developed symptoms

Health officials later found that a young man and his mother, both of whom are friends of the 50-year-old, and a Taiwanese man and his Vietnamese wife who were trying to introduce a Vietnamese woman to the young man, had developed the symptoms for dengue fever -- a high fever, aching bones and headaches.

Further tests found that three of them had been infected, while the other was still being tested.

Nantou County also reported a case of hemorrhagic dengue fever a day earlier. The patient, a six-year-old girl who went with her mother to Vietnam between May 10 and June 7, developed a fever the day she returned to Taiwan, although she was not diagnosed at the time.

Her high fever persisted and she also developed a rash on her face and body, prompting a hospital to report her as being infected with hemorrhagic dengue fever.

imported cases

Lin Ting (林頂), deputy director of the DOH's Center for Disease Control, said that there have been 36 imported dengue fever cases so far this year, 22 of which were caught in Indonesia, followed by nine cases from Vietnam and three from Thailand.

Lin noted that dengue fever infection is serious in Southeast Asia and can be fatal. He urged the public to be on their guard against mosquito bites when traveling to the region.

With the continuous rain in recent days, he also urged the public to remove any standing water from close to their homes in the hope of reducing the breeding areas for mosquitoes and preventing an outbreak of indigenous dengue fever.
This story has been viewed 1640 times.