[Short video][People-to-people bonds]The retrograde epidemic deepens the community and wins trust. Sharing Hong Kong experience helps prevent and control dengue fever in East Africa – Hong Kong people on demand – Hong Kong people talk about the place

//The World Health Organization estimates that as many as 400 million people are infected with dengue fever every year. Hong Kong has the ability and experience to help African countries control this infectious disease, so it should definitely contribute! //

Colorful low houses, children swinging on the roadside… What does Africa look like in your imagination?

This is a civilian residential area in Djibouti City, the capital of the East African country Djibouti, with sewage canals crisscrossing it. Garbage and stagnant water encourage the breeding of mosquitoes, and the health of residents is always threatened by deadly infectious diseases such as dengue fever.

Ahmed Robleh Abdilleh, Minister of Health of Djibouti, said: “Twenty years ago, mosquito-borne diseases were rarely seen in Djibouti. The biggest problem here is climate change. With more rain, there are more and more mosquitoes, and mosquitoes have also mutated. Now (Celsius) ) Mosquitoes will not die at 40 degrees Celsius. Today, when patients go to the hospital, the biggest cause of fever is dengue fever, malaria or chikungunya. This is a very serious situation for us. The Djiboutian government will take several measures, including spraying. Use insecticidal water to kill mosquitoes and distribute mosquito nets to residential areas.”

The Sharing Foundation launched a project to comprehensively eliminate cataract blindness in Djibouti in February last year. It aims to help the local area deal with the backlog of 6,000 cataract cases through free surgeries within three years. During the preparation and implementation process, it was discovered that the local dengue fever risk was unacceptable. ignore. At the project’s first anniversary ceremony, the foundation donated 5,000 dengue fever rapid test kits and 1,800 chikungunya rapid test kits to the Ministry of Health of Djibouti to assist local prevention and control of insect-borne diseases.

Leung Chun-ying, Vice Chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference and Chairman of the Sharing Foundation, said: “In the past year, especially because the spread of dengue fever has become more and more obvious, outbreaks have occurred in some countries at any time. We have developed a relatively complete set of methods ourselves, which basically The first step is to control the spread of dengue fever through physical means.”

Ko Wing-man, former Secretary for Food and Health of Hong Kong and director of the Sharing Foundation, said: “Dengue fever is a disease for which there is no effective treatment so far, so it is most important to try to diagnose patients infected with dengue fever. Because some Patients have no symptoms even if they are infected, so it is very important to test this function to prevent them from being bitten by mosquitoes and then transmitting their disease to another person. One of the ways is to isolate them and use a mosquito net to prevent them from being bitten by mosquitoes. Mosquitoes will bite them.” He continued that in the long term, Djibouti needs to improve public health facilities, including an effective garbage disposal and effective underground water drainage.

Dengue fever is a disease spread through mosquito bites. Symptoms include fever, headache, etc., which are somewhat similar to colds. The World Health Organization estimates that 100 million to 400 million people are infected every year. With rapid test kits, results are available in fifteen to twenty minutes. Early identification and early isolation can help cut off the chain of transmission.

In addition to eliminating cataracts in five countries, the Sharing Foundation is also carrying out dengue fever prevention and control projects in Timor-Leste, the Laos-China cross-border railway between Laos and China, and Honduras, donating rapid test kits, mosquito nets, mosquito killer lamps, and fly paper. In addition, we will cooperate with community publicity and education to strengthen public awareness of dengue fever prevention and control. Since its establishment six years ago, the foundation has been deeply involved in various project countries and implemented people-to-people bonds through actions.

Ko Wing-man pointed out that Hong Kong is located in a subtropical place where dengue fever outbreaks are severe every year. “Even though Hong Kong is surrounded by these places, we can still effectively control dengue fever outbreaks. Our team has the public health knowledge and experience to help them.”

Chen Yingning, Director General of the Sharing Foundation, said: “Many of our public health projects in areas are invited by the local or local Ministry of Health because we feel that our action and decision-making capabilities are high. Many international organizations have a strong voice. “Many non-governmental organizations have no activities at all during the epidemic, so we started to work here and get along with the people here and the patients here.” She believes that promoting public health projects does not matter whether the Ministry of Health can do it or not. The most important thing is whether the people listen to you or not, and whether your propaganda reaches the ground. “We do ophthalmology first. When the people see things, they know that we are getting along with them. The level of trust in the process is high. We feel it is an honor. Many ministries of health in different countries have invited us to do assessments. We were too late. Do it. We hope to do as much as possible with limited power.”

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