WHY OUR FIGHT AGAINST DENGUE FEELS LIKE A CAMPAIGN RALLY

Our nurse, Messach, had a sullen look on his face. "Doc," he said, "our BHWs report two confirmed dengue cases in their sitio. Both were admitted to the city hospital."

- By DR. JUHANI Z. CAPEDING

It was 2018. I was still a municipal health officer in Tagapul-an, a beautiful island municipality in Samar. Two cases might not sound like much. But in that sitio with fewer than 50 households packed into a small cove, two was enough to raise alarms. I picked up the phone and called Roger Brillantes, a seasoned sanitary inspector at the Samar Provincial Health Office and head of the vector control and surveillance unit. His response was immediate: "Doc, two cases? That's already an outbreak. Let's do fogging, but we have to pair it with a clean-up. Fogging alone isn't enough."

If you ask the average person what a dengue response looks like, they'll probably say "fogging." Ask them what fogging does, and they'll say, "it kills mosquitoes." But here's the thing: it does, but it also doesn't. Most adult mosquitoes die. Some fly off. The eggs, larvae, and breeding grounds? Still there. In a few days, a new generation hatches, ready to bite and infect again. Let's be honest: fogging is like the campaign rally of dengue response. It's loud. It's visible. It photographs well. And for a lot of local officials, that's the point. Every dengue season, fogging machines roll out like campaign caravans. There's the barangay captain in PPE. There's the konsehal with a megaphone. There's the photo op that screams, "We're doing something!"

I'm not saying that fogging is worthless. It has value. But it isn't enough.