Defeat Dengue, Worry Free Anugerahaning S, Putri Raudina A, Muhammad Fathi B A F Universitas Gadjah Mada
The negative impacts of climate change to our daily activities are getting real. Medicine is no exception. Dengue fever, a disease of the tropic and subtropic, is carried by the mosquito called Aedes sp. The increase of the global temperature has given advantage for these little disease-borne mosquitos to expand their territories to other area they’ ve never been before, due to the( used to be) low temperature. This means, dengue fever can occur in new places where dengue never occur before. The fact that dengue is a disease of only several tropical and subtropical countries will be a story of the past. Currently, there are 2.5 – 3 million people at risk of getting dengue fever, and as climate change continues to exist, at 2085 it is estimated that 70 % of the earth population is at risk of getting dengue.
Dengue fever is a deadly disease, late symptomp recognition and poor management could lead to death. Therefore the best way to defeat dengue is to prevent getting mosquito bites. As the wise men say“ an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”, the international community should be given insight and knowledge on how to defeat dengue at individual-community level starting from now. We are racing against time to elude the increasing mortalities due to the climate change. The poster carries a light but vital message of simple preventive measures that everyone can do to defeat dengue with an easily memorized mnemonics: DEFEAT. We hope by implementing these easy steps, we could defeat dengue altogether.“ If you think you are too small to make a difference, you haven’ t spent a night with a mosquito,”— African proverb.