Pacific doctors coping with dengue cases, say health leaders

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Most dengue fever outbreaks are not slowing down in the Pacific but there are hopes this will change as the weather gets colder and drier.

Samoa's director general of health Aiono Dr Alec Ekeroma said the country saw 56 new cases of the viral infection last week, which is close to a third of the confirmed cases since January.

Samoa, Fiji, Tonga and the Cook Islands have all declared dengue outbreaks. All countries apart from the Cook Islands have recorded at least one death.

Aiono said Samoa's Ministry of Health is encouraging people to stamp out breeding grounds, which is preferred over spraying campaigns.

"The chemicals [are] expensive and it's not as effective as we would like it to be, so it's better actually that we engage the community to destroy breeding sites," Aiono said.

He said health care staff are managing.

"The good thing is that there's been no very sick cases really recently, so in fact looking at the data there's no one in the hospital right now."

Fiji Medical Association president, Dr Alipate Vakamocea thinks Fiji is about to hit its dengue peak.

"It's seasonal, so it should be on its way down and we've seen the numbers from the Central Division start to come down," he said.

"It's just our numbers in the Western Division haven't really started to settle yet but we should see that now that we're entering into the cold season."

Fiji's health ministry has declared an outbreak in the Central and Western Divisions. There have been more than one-thousand cases recorded.

"We've noticed that the outbreak is particularly higher in the Western Division compared to the Central Division, and we've had quite a few admissions into hospital with dengue and even quite a few into ICUs with complications of dengue."

Vakamocea said doctors are coping.

"We've had some challenges, which we've raised in the past with a couple of our consumables, like our IV fluids and things like that," he said.

"But they're managing at the moment. I think there are other donor partners who have stepped in to help the ministry bolster its clinical support."

He said there had been significant public health campaigns to clean up and reduce the number of mosquito breeding sites.

A statement from Cook Islands Ministry of Health on Friday said five cases were considered active, there have been 17 cases since February, and 97 dengue tests have been done.

"The average rate remains stable at approximately 1 - 2 confirmed cases per day," it said.

Tonga has had 815 cases.