Santa Cruz demands declaration of health emergency due to dengue fever in Bolivia

Authorities of the Bolivian department of Santa Cruz (east) demand the national government to declare a sanitary emergency due to the Dengue Fever epidemic, whose cases total more than 4,700, declared Paola Weber, Director of Citizen Security of the Santa Cruz government.

“After analyzing the situation, it was determined to demand the national government to declare a national sanitary emergency, considering that there are cases of dengue in eight departments, municipalities with a declared sanitary emergency, such as the city of Santa Cruz de la Sierra, La Guardia, El Torno, Camiri, among others. We need to have other types of resources,” said the official.

The regional authority warned that the hospital capacity of Santa Cruz, the largest region of Bolivia in surface area, is at its limit and may collapse in the coming days.

“Instead of decreasing, the number of cases is increasing; hospitals are oversaturated with patients. If it continues, there will be no capacity to attend to the population,” she warned.

Likewise, it was determined to carry out a campaign to destroy the breeding sites of the Aedes Aegypti mosquito, the transmitter of the disease, next Sunday.

Bolivia registers 4,763 cases of dengue fever in seven departments, Santa Cruz being the epidemic’s epicenter with 3,512 infected.

With information from Sputnik

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