BANGKOK, 3 January 2012 (NNT) – The Ministry of Public Health has alerted people in flood-affected southern provinces to water-borne diseases after the floods subsided. Local disease control offices will work together to sanitize the areas.
Permanent Secretary for Public Health Phaichit Warachit said that the flooding situation in Songkhla on 3 January has been resolved. Surveys by mobile medical teams, however, have found that 900 people in the province have fallen ill, most of them diagnosed with flu. The permanent secretary has thus instructed the provincial public health and disease control offices to keep an eye on flood- and mosquito-borne diseases, especially leptospirosis and dengue fever.
The disease control office in Songkhla province will dispatch teams of personnel to other flood-affected provinces in the South to help collect garbage, which could spawn diseases if remain unattended. The teams will also spray fly and mosquito repellent in local communities and check on the health of the residents. If contagious diseases, such as diarrhea, are found, treatments will be given to the patients for immediate disease control.