Dengue fever kills 182 in Cambodia this year

PHNOM PENH, July 14 (Reuters) Dengue fever has killed 182 Cambodians so far this year and the crisis will continue to worsen unless concerted community action is taken, the government and World Health Organisation said today.

''This year is particularly severe and, if present trends continue, it will be the most serious to date,'' the WHO and the Health Ministry said in a joint statement.

''Community-based larval control and elimination of mosquito breeding sites are currently the only sustainable methods of outbreak prevention and the only effective method of reducing the risk of infection,'' the statement said.

Health officials had been working hard in anti-mosquito breeding campaigns in high risk areas since the outbreak, but the results were not very satisfying, Ngan Chantha, head of the country's anti-dengue programme, told Reuters.

''It's hard to change our people's behaviour. Health workers can't do all the work, and villagers have to help themselves, too,'' he said, telling Cambodians to clean containers every 10 days to stem mosquito breeding.

The virus was expected to reach its peak during the late August-September heavy rainy season, Ngan Chantha said.

''I am asking all to join hands to fight dengue. We must kill the mosquito-borne disease before it kills us,'' he said.

Dengue had killed 182 out of 14,986 infected so far this year compared with 116 deaths from 12,300 infected in the whole of 2006, Ngan Chantha said.

Last month, the four-Swiss funded hospitals appealed for 7 million dollars from donors to fight a disease that has reached epidemic proportions in wealthy Singapore as well as striking hard in neighbouring Thailand and in Malaysia.

Cambodia, still recovering from decades of civil war and the Khmer Rouge ''Killing Fields'', was seeking 90 tonnes of pesticide worth about 500,000 dollars to contain mosquito breeding, Ngan Chantha said.

The Asian Development Bank had given 300,000 dollars and the International Red Cross had offered 35 tonnes of pesticide, he said.

Cambodia's public health system remains rudimentary, with much of its funding coming from foreign aid.

According to the World Bank, annual government spending on health is about 3 dollars per person.

REUTERS GT HS1349