Public Health Ministry is seriously trying to prevent Zika virus

BANGKOK, Feb 22 (TNA) -- The Public Health Ministry ordered its staff nationwide to intensify measures to control the Zika virus and ask general people to seriously get rid of mosquito larvae. Officials at nationwide hospitals are put on alert so that they will take swift actions to control the disease just when it strikes anyone. Health officials have been ordered to reach possible patients in three hours and apply fumigation in a 100-meter radius of a patient’s residence in a day. Dr Suwannachai Wattanayingcharoenchai, deputy permanent secretary for public health, said close surveillance continued and measures were seriously implemented to cut the population of mosquitoes, especially striped mosquitoes that were the carriers of the disease. Hospital staff were ordered to carefully monitor five groups of patients comprising visitors from Zika virus-spreading countries, pregnant women with fevers and rashes, fever patients with rashes, newborns with shrunken heads, and patients with polyneuritis. Dr Suwannachai said that Zika patients had been reported in Bangkok and Udon Thani and officials were controlling the disease well. (TNA)