For those traveling to Melaka, fear no more as since today the government declared Malacca to be meningitis free.

This came after releasing the 3 last quarantined citizens one week ago from hospital. No new cases of meningitis have been reported since the outbreak started beginning this month.

Traveling however continues to be hazardous when you travel by plane: airplanes just circulate a limited amount of air, so whoever has a flu, you most likely will breath in his or her germs.

That’s what happened with a Japanese citizen of Malacca who traveled on board of a Malaysian Air Lines flight where one of the passengers got the H1N1 virus. Meanwhile his girlfriend got the H1N1 virus (swine flu, Mexican flu, Influenza A) as well, but the Japanese expat is confirmed to be as healthy as a fish.

Which makes Malaysia again a healthy country to travel to, just make sure you protect yourself against aedes mosquitoes in order not to get dengue fever nor the milder chikungunya disease:

• make sure you use mosquito repellent all the time
   
• be aware that the mosquitoes normally fly between 17.00 pm and 09.00 am and
   
• they attack "below the waist", so protect your feet, ankles and legs especially.

Meanwhile 10.000 people worldwide have been recorded having the swine flu, luckily it’s not that deadly but it’s quite a headache, literary!

Today again a Malaysian governmental worker was fogging against aedes mosquitoes, attempting better dengue fever prevention.

Meanwhile on the radio it was announced that:

Malaysian dengue cases: deaths almost double from 2008

Having been in hospital already twice with dengue fever and many of my friends also once or twice we do take preventive measures to get rid of aedes mosquitoes:

• not having any stale water standing anywhere outside
   
• mosquito netting on doors and windows
   
• not going out uncovered between 17.00pm and 09.00am

Although more people are aware of the danger: the death toll still has doubled compared to last year. This only means one thing:

There are more aedes mosquitoes out there than before!

That does explain the more intense fogging. Fogging only takes place after a dengue case has been reported by a local hospital. More fogging means more dengue cases are reported in the hospital nearby us…

Be warned when you visit or return home from Malaysia and you have severe headaches, less appetite and flu-like symptoms. Especially when you don’t feel like eating nor doing anything (not even waking up):

go and see a doctor and
tell them you have visited a country
where dengue fever is on the rise.

The main thing is that doctors monitor your blood platelet level. Once it goes down (5 to 7 days after you have been bitten by an aedes mosquito), you need to administer yourself into hospital.

Not that there is a cure for dengue fever, but when your platelet count is low, hospitals can give you blood serum to keep you alive. Meanwhile your body has to fight off the dengue fever virus.

Technorati Tags: aedes mosquito, Dengue fever, dengue fever prevention

War on Dengue and Chikungunya: that’s the new slogan to combat the chikungunya outbreak in Malaysia.

So who are Malaysians fighting against? Mosquitoes! Not aedes mosquitoes that cause dengue fever, not malaria mosquitoes that luckily aren’t here but: chikungunya causing aedes mosquitos.

The good news

Chikungunya is not as deadly as dengue fever… Nevertheless you will feel very sick as if you have dengue fever.

As we mentioned above: it’s the same aedes mosquito spreading dengue as well as chikungunya.

So the only good thing you can say when you have chikungunya is: thank God this aedes mosquito wasn’t carrying dengue!

Mosquito Awareness

Although I haven’t had anybody on my doorstep explaining me how to combat mosquitoes, the radio is boosting a heavy mosquito awareness campaign these days.

And as you can see in the picture: Malaysia is really fogging heavily: I couldn’t see anything anymore out of my window once the fogging people passed by. All free, as normally they bother to ask you to pay, pretending they were a private company.

Fogging only kills adult aedes mosquitoes

Although now fogging is increased, this only kills the adult mosquitoes. Which means the eggs and larvae that are in water will still survive. It’s these "babies" that make the war against aedes mosquito’s only possible if we eliminate water at our premises.

Standing water provides an excellent environment for aedes mosquitoes to breed. To control mosquitoes do eliminate sources of standing water outside your home:

Drain or remove water-holding containers such as:

• dishes beneath flower pots : that’s where I found my aedes mosquito larvae
   
• buckets : even if you turn them upside down: the larvae only need 1 drop of water in order to become a mosquito
   
• rain barrels
   
• leaky outdoor faucets
   
• toys or garbage that holds water
   
• cans
   
• bottles
   
• clogged rain gutters
   
• wading pools
   
• boats
   
• plastic covers and tarps

Remove old tires and plug tree holes and stumps, as these can also be popular breeding grounds for mosquitoes.

Also, be sure to routinely change the water in pet dishes and birdbaths.

The bad news: chikungunya outbreak

Chikungunya is but the latest in a long line of diseases carried by mosquitoes, which include Malaria, Dengue Fever, Yellow Fever, Japanese Encephalitis, and the West Nile Encephalitis and causing 1 million deaths worldwide.

In 2007: Malaysia reported 200 chikungunya cases. In 2008: more than 3700 cases have occurred.

Today it has risen to 100 chikungunya cases per week.

For those visiting Malaysia

Please cover yourself from 17.00pm till 09.00am and use as much mosquito-repellant as possible! The dengue and chikungunya outbreak is here to stay.

Technorati Tags: aedes, aedes mosquito, chikunguny outbreak, Chikungunya, dengue, mosquitoes

With the dengue cases on the rise in Malaysia, you better learn about the dengue fever symptoms and more importantly how to protect yourself against aedes mosquitoes.

The first time I got dengue fever, my doctor gave me some antibiotics as he thought I got a flu… (stupid idiot as dengue is a virus and antibiotics is a treatment only for bacteria… if he can’t see the difference, then why is he a GP in the first place?).

A few days later the symptoms were clear: red rashes everywhere, a terrible headache and other flu like symptoms. No more appetite, not even a nasi lemak made me willing to eat…

Further on I became really without any strength to do anything. All I could think of was : go to bed and hope when you wake up it’s over… Luckily I went to another doctor who recognised my rashes and sent me to hospital on the spot.

The second time however I got dengue fever, the symptoms were not too clear. Again the terrible headache but the rashes only came after about a week.

The first day I saw the rashes, I went to hospital immediately and my blood platelet count was 25 only: meaning I was lucky to spot the dengue fever symptoms before I would have been bleeding to death the next day.

Dengue cases worldwide

Dengue cases worldwide appear where the transmission of dengue fever: aedes mosquito exists.

As you notice: it’s a tropical problem (red areas on the map show dengue epidemic areas, pink areas on the map are infested with Aedes mosquito’s but don’t have too many dengue fever cases reported).

Prevention of dengue

The best protection against any mosquito is a mosquito net and mosquito repellant. Read more tips and techniques on how to protect yourself against aedes mosquitoes.

Treatments for dengue fever

As you notice, after 20 years in the tropics I survived 2 dengue fevers. Treatments are "easy" as there is no cure.

The disease kind of kills your appetite and you get dehydrated in a degree you need a drip to keep enough liquid getting into your body.

Then your blood will be monitored each day as dengue will make your blood thinner or get your blood platelets down. As such when your platelet count becomes too low, you will be given extra blood-platelets through a drip. You have to cross fingers that you are in a hospital where the quality of the blood-serums is not tampered with…

Summarized: dengue fever symptoms feel as if you have the worst flu ever . If you live in the tropics, go and see your doctor and if you are loosing appetite and feel lethargic, make sure you ask your doctor if these are dengue fever symptoms.

Technorati Tags: aedes mosquito, aedes mosquitoes, dengue cases, Dengue fever, dengue fever symptoms, mosquitoes

My previous post about aedes mosquitos alarmed some people back home, so let me explain what dengue fever is all about.

Yellow fever is not dengue fever

I still remember my doctor opening a book, ruffled through some pages and decided to give me a jab against yellow fever before I left to Malaysia…

Yellow fever is not dengue fever. There is no vaccine for dengue fever, the only way not to contract dengue fever is to make sure you don’t get bitten by those zebra striped mosquitos called aedes mosquitos.

Malaria is not dengue fever

What malaria and dengue have in common is that there aren’t vaccines for both fevers.

The big difference between the 2 is:

• once you have malaria: every so many months it will make you feverish and you need to take medicine (quinine works). It’s a recurrent fever so of course it’s monetized to "cure" it and not to prevent it
• once you have dengue: you will get sick once, and it’s kind of do or die…

What does Dengue Fever do with you?

Dengue fever messes up your immune system but more dangerous; it reduces your bloodplatelets count. In other words: it’s making your blood thinner to the extent that you can get internal bleeding and bleed to death.

The solution is to get into the hospital online, so they can monitor your blood and make it thicker again (give you extra bloodplatelets) once it’s getting quite too thin for comfort.

They will also put you on a drip because otherwise your body will get dehydrated. An extra nuisance is that you don’t have any appetite, so you won’t eat much to built strength and let your body fight off the virus.

The problem is being diagnosed too late. It all starts with headaches and other flu like symptoms, so if you are a strong person ready to "fight a terrible flu", you could end up with internal bleedings and then things are too late.

How to be aware of dengue

The aedes mosquito loves the urban areas, especially construction sites (read booming cities). It only needs 1 drop of water to lay eggs…

They tend to only come out after 17.00 and before 09.00 am, but rest assured, I have seen many aedes mosquitoes not wearing a watch.

If you do have "a strange flu", make sure you ask your doctor what experience he has with dengue.

It took me 2 young doctors (you have a flu, take antibiotics…) before I visited a 3th much older doctor who looked at me, put the blood-pressure machine on my arm kind of hurting me and 2 minutes later my arm was full with little red dots.

"Can you make it to a hospital now or do I get you transport?" "For what I can see, you have dengue fever…" he said.

As you can see, dengue fever didn’t kill me

Technorati Tags: aedes mosquito, Dengue fever, fevers, jab, malaria, medicine, mosquito, mosquitos, quinine, recurrent fever, vaccines, yellow fever, zebra