Transcript
In early December, Samoa's health ministry recorded 1,522 confirmed dengue cases with 339 hospital admissions and four deaths. But by the end of December, the ministry revealed nearly 2,500 people had contracted the mosquito-borne disease and there had been 5 deaths, with no further updates. The highest number of reported cases were in children aged between 5 to 9 years old.
Our correspondent, Autagavaia Tipi Autagavaia, says local health officials just don't want to create panic among the public.
"Yeah there is a lot of speculation and people talking about how this is not the right figure for dengue fever and suspect it may be more than 5. The mentality we have here in Samoa is to make people calm down and not to make any information that might cause a panic."
Tourist Vao Muller travelled to Samoa from New Zealand over the holiday break, but was shocked to not see any signs or local media coverage about it. Having contracted dengue before, she says she took all the necessary precautions for her family including the frequent use of mosquito sprays and bracelets. Ms Muller says people she met during her travels seemed quite blasé about the disease, and that's a worry.
"I kind of expected that people there would be more aware of what was going on, but they weren't. From the lack of information that was available over there, I would hope that they are taking it seriously, but from what we could see, there was no evidence of that."
New Zealand's Minister for Pacific Peoples, Aupito William Sio, was also in Samoa over the break. He says there are suspicions the number of deaths from dengue might be higher. Lawmakers in neighbouring American Samoa held a special session last week to discuss what is being done to prevent dengue spreading further. Currently there were 485 confirmed dengue cases in American Samoa and no deaths. RNZ Pacific correspondent Fili Sagapolutele says travellers to Samoa are being warned to protect themselves, but on return if they have any dengue symptoms to seek medical care.
"What the lawmakers were trying to find out was to see the preventative measures that American Samoa has put in place but health officials have credited the public awareness programme and cleanup by the community.There was a call about how they could get rid of the dengue but health officials have told them that dengue is here to stay."
As well as the two Samoas, current outbreaks in the region include Fiji, French Polynesia and Wallis and Futuna. The Secretariat of the Pacific Community's Dr Sala Saketa says it's becoming harder for small island states to combat dengue outbreaks. There are four serotypes of dengue with Samoa having the common serotype 2. Dr Saketa says dengue tends to be concentrated in urban areas but people travel.
"So these are some of the predisposing factors fuelling dengue in the region and one challenge is of course to prevent or control such diseases and so because of the nature of the countries who don't have resource constraints as they don't have the resources to combat an outbreak depending on the size and number of people being affected so that is kind of the challenge that we are seeing."
Dr Saketa says an effective control would be to have a surveillance disease system in place and a system of emergency preparedness as well as ongoing public awareness campaigns. Samoa's Ministry of Health officials did not respond to our requests for an interview. However Samoa's prime minister recently admonished the public on his 2AP radio show for being lax in heeding Ministry of Health warnings about the dengue outbreak, while defending government awareness campaigns. New Zealand's Auckland Regional Public Health Service stated it had seen a rise in the number of dengue fever cases in recent months, 70-percent of which could be traced to Samoa.