NewsDesk @bactiman63

The national government, in a coordinated effort with the municipality of Santa Cruz de la Sierra, set up pediatric hospital health centers with more than 120 beds for timely care of minors who are infected by dengue, reported this Wednesday afternoon, the Minister of Health and Sports, Jeyson Auza.

“Today we are again in Santa Cruz and we are going to coordinate with the municipality and with the necessary instances to be able to attend to this contingency, we are convinced that these more than 120 beds that we are setting up in the municipality are going to be very useful to attend our children,” he said at a press conference.

These pediatric disease control care centers is one more of the actions carried out by the national government to contain the epidemic outbreak of the Aedes Aegypti vector, in the municipality of Santa Cruz de la Sierra.     

Minister Auza explained that in order to defeat the disease, the Government, in addition to strengthening these health centers with 12 professional specialists in pediatrics, will reinforce the National Center for Tropical Diseases (Cenetrop) with biochemicals that will expedite diagnosis.

The health authority in a didactic way explained that the disease is not transmitted from person to person but through a vector, by the bite of a (female) mosquito to transmit dengue.

He remarked that this cleaning work, protection of the health of the population, is part of the responsibilities of the Governorate, which instead dedicated itself to doing politics and not taking timely actions, however, he stressed “your Government is here to combat and eliminate that endemic disease.

“We are not here to fight, we are here so that with work, with good news we continue to fight dengue, ask the population of Santa Cruz, the Bolivian population where this disease is endemic, we need your collaboration, avoid the existence of artificial breeding grounds or natural causes that generate this disease”, he added.

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For her part, the Secretary of Health of the municipality of Santa Cruz, Adriana Amelunge, explained that pediatric beds were set up at the El Tatú Municipal Center, at the Bajío del Oriente Hospital, at the Plan 3,000 Pediatric Hospital and the Pampa de the island.

“All this would make a total of 120 exclusive pediatric beds for dengue and we hope that in the next few days, based on demand, we can increase it if required,” he added.   

Today, 208 additional dengue fever cases were reported, bringing the accumulated cases of dengue in Bolivia to 2,739. Six deaths have been reported.

The department of Santa Cruz reports the highest number of infected with 2,012 in total, followed by Beni 452, Tarija 116, La Paz 72, Pando 29, Chuquisaca 40 and Cochabamba 18.