A 14-year-old patient (District 12, Ho Chi Minh City) was admitted to Children's Hospital 1 in a state of dengue shock and blood clotting. The child was taken to the Emergency Department, then transferred to the Dengue Fever Department. The patient's family said that before being admitted to the hospital, they thought it was a normal fever, so they only bought medicine and gave the child IV fluids.
Dr. Nguyen Minh Tuan - Head of the Dengue Fever Department at Children's Hospital 1 - said that compared to a month ago, the number of children hospitalized and treated for dengue fever has increased. Many children are hospitalized when they already have severe symptoms such as dengue shock syndrome and multiple organ failure.
Some cases of dengue fever are hospitalized late due to the parents' subjectivity. There are also cases where the symptoms are not clear at the initial examination stage, and are misdiagnosed as hand, foot and mouth disease, viral fever, rash fever, etc.
Children's Hospital 2 has also treated a child with severe dengue shock, multiple organ damage, respiratory failure requiring a ventilator. Patient K (Ba Ria - Vung Tau province) was transferred to a lower-level hospital in critical condition, with a high risk of death; the test result was positive for dengue fever.
According to Dr. Vo Thanh Luan - Deputy Head of the Department of Intensive Care for Infection and COVID-19, Children's Hospital 2, it is now the rainy season in many localities. The incidence of dengue fever often increases due to favorable environmental conditions for Aedes mosquitoes - the main agent transmitting the disease.
Dengue fever can be confused with common fevers, leading to the risk of missing the disease if the initial symptoms are not correctly identified.
Dr. Luan recommends that parents pay attention to signs to promptly take their children to medical facilities for examination, including high fever that does not subside after 2-3 days; headache, especially behind the eyes; muscle and joint pain sometimes accompanied by rash or bleeding under the skin; nausea, fatigue, or abdominal pain can also be signs of the disease.
When infected with Dengue fever, patients need to be closely monitored and examined every day, and need to be hospitalized if prescribed by a doctor.
According to statistics from the Ho Chi Minh City Center for Disease Control (HCDC), in week 45 (November 4-10), the city recorded 582 cases of dengue fever. The total number of dengue fever cases accumulated from the beginning of 2024 to week 45 is 11,265 cases. Districts with high number of cases per 100,000 people include: District 1, Thu Duc City and District 7.
