Let us start by define what Dengue Fever is and where it come from.

What is Dengue Fever?

Dengue fever is is an acute infectious disease manifested initially with fever. This is transmitted by the bite of an Aedes mosquito. Now you must know that not because an Aedes mosquito bites you, you will have dengue. Aedes mosquito that are infected with any dengue virus is the one that transmit dengue fever.

What are the symptoms of dengue fever?

The main symptom of dengue fever is mild fever to high fever. Now this can be confusing as almost all infections had the same symptoms. Just remember that dengue fever is also accompanied by muscle and joints pain, rashes, severe head ache and pain in the eye. High fever can range from 39 degrees Celsius up. Although you still have to depend your observation on your child’s normal temperature.

Here are other symptoms of dengue fever: Nose bleeding when fever starts to subside, abdominal pain, vomiting of coffee-colored matter and dark-colored stools.

Just keep in my mind that when a person is suffering from fever for three days and is showing signs of fatigue, bring them to the nearest hospital for diagnosis.

How is Dengue Fever diagnosed?

The diagnosis of dengue is usually made clinically. The classic picture is high fever with no localising source of infection, a rash with thrombocytopenia and relative leukopenia – low platelet and white blood cell count. Dengue infection can affect many organs and thus may present unusually as liver dysfunction, renal impairment, meningo-encephalitis or gastroenteritis. (wikipedia)

Usually a patient is taken a blood sample to see the platelet count.

How To Treat Dengue

There is no immunization for dengue virus. A patient can suffer dengue more than once too. for mild dengue case, the patient can take paracetamol but not aspirin and non steroidal anti inflammatory drugs (like Ibufropen) as this drugs may worsen the bleeding.

Oral re hydration should be included on the treatment. This can be treated by consuming more liquid and juices but in some cases, hydration with intravenous fluid in a hospital is needed.

Platelet count should also be monitored and observe the patient for progression into dengue hemorrhagic fever.

And with that, I will no longer condemn news stations for bringing up news like this. We need to know. And we need to act. The government should act. For one, they should sought the root cause of this. Why mothers will come to a point of leaving their babies behind? Is it lack of support? Economic support? Shame? They also need to strengthen their program with regards to women, their rights and their protection.

I am telling that it is the government’s fault why some mothers resorted to that kind of action. Each one is responsible for their action, but then again, we cannot deny the fact that the most reason why moms would do such a thing is due to poverty.