GENERAL SANTOS CITY -- Health personnel are closely monitoring a village here due to the increasing cases of suspected measles infection.
A report from the City Health Office's (CHO) epidemiology and surveillance unit (CESU) said the monitored cases of suspected measles in the city from January 2018 until this week reached a total of 148, mostly involving infants and children.
Such figure is 1,133 percent higher than the 12 cases recorded in 2017 within the city's 26 barangays, it said.
A total of 111 patients, mostly coming from Sitio Pao Pao in Barangay Sinawal, were admitted in local hospitals since last month.
Ian John Umol, rural health unit nurse, said a suspected measles case was first reported in the area last November 27.
Citing accounts from barangay health workers, a 28-year-old mother showed symptoms of the viral disease and was admitted at a hospital.
Following her discharge, Umol said the patient's eight-month-old baby was infected and the disease eventually spread to other households in the area.
Umol said residents of Sitio Pao Pao are considered vulnerable to such infection as most of them are transients and regularly move from one place to another.
He said the village has residents that came from as far as Jose Abad Santos town in Davao Occidental.
"Some were from T'boli who cross to the village and after a few days, they would then move to nearby areas in Sarangani," he said in an interview over Brigada News here.
He was referring to villages situated near the boundaries of this city and T'boli town in South Cotabato as well as Maasim town in Sarangani Province.
To address the increasing measles cases, Umol said CHO has been conducting vaccination activities in the affected areas in coordination with the Department of Health-Region 12.
Dr. Rochelle Oco, CHO chief, said they earlier took samples from the infected patients in Sitio Pao Pao for confirmatory testing at the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine in Muntinlupa City.
She said CESU personnel have been making rounds of local hospitals to monitor other possible cases of suspected measles.
Oco said they were also monitoring suspected measles patients from Barangay Upper Suyan in Malapatan, Sarangani, which was hit by an outbreak last month that killed at least 20 children. (PNA)
