JEDDAH, 6 February 2007 — A seminar on dengue fever took place yesterday at the Meridien Hotel in Jeddah, aimed at combating the mosquito-borne illness that occurs in this part of the world.
But after giving his presentation at the seminar — a presentation that would normally be followed by a question-and-answer session by the reporters who were invited to attend — Sulaiman Al-Saghir, the Ministry of Health’s general supervisor for parasitic diseases and the head of the ministry’s dengue fever task force, refused to take questions from the media and quickly left the room.
Arab News wanted to find out details about a series of recent statements from the Ministry of Health and Jeddah health officials claiming a drop in incidents of dengue. However, these statements have not been supported by statistical information, the type of data that would be readily provided by health officials in other countries.
How many people in the Kingdom are diagnosed with dengue each year? What is the rate of decline that government officials claim? How successful has the current dengue awareness campaign that kicked off a year ago been in preventing the spread of the disease? These are three of the questions Arab News tried to ask the head of the country’s chief dengue fighting agency yesterday.
Al-Saghir gave the keynote speech at the seminar about the spread of dengue fever. Quraish Trading Co., Bayer Environmental Science and Swingtech jointly organized the seminar, which was aimed at presenting the latest technologies and methods in combating the disease. A couple of hundred cases are reported in Jeddah in a typical year, but hard statistics are hard to come by. Officials in the Ministry of Health say the number of infected cases is declining, but no figure has been presented to support the claim.
In February 2006, the authorities launched a dengue awareness campaign, which they described as a success. According to health officials, more cases of dengue fever were diagnosed after the campaign.
Dr. Noha Dashash, assistant director of primary health care in Jeddah, in a previous interview with Arab News attributed the alleged increase in diagnoses to people learning about the disease through the awareness campaign and going to the doctor to get checked.
