Taiwan Centers for Disease Control (Taiwan CDC) organized the “APEC Workshop for the Control Practice of Dengue Fever” at the Garden Villa in Kaohsiung on June 5-6, 2008.The workshop gathered 20 delegates from 11 APEC member economies and 20 local public health officers working on dengue control.The primary objectives of the workshop include sharing the lessons learned from fighting dengue epidemics in Kaohsiung, which is collectively known as the “Kaohsiung Model”, and introducing a self-developed tool —“Management & Visualization of Vector Mosquito Breeding Sites Using Google Maps” to all participants in order to strengthen the capacity of surveillance and management of APEC member economies on dengue control, focusing on the practice of vector control, risk communication, and community mobilization.
Since dengue epidemics still occur in Taiwan every year, especially in the Kaohsiung area, Taiwan has had years of fighting dengue epidemics in Kaohsiung.Nevertheless, the “Kaohsiung Model” is also applicable to other cities on the island.Earlier this year, Taiwan CDC received partial financial support from the APEC to organize the “APEC Workshop for the Control Practice of Dengue Fever”.To share the “Kaohsiung Model” with other APEC member economies, Taiwan CDC specifically picked Kaohsiung as the venue for the workshop.
The former director of Health Bureau of Kaohsiung City, Dr. Han Ming-Rong, was invited to attend the workshop as a keynote speaker to talk about the “Kaohsiung Model”.Besides the “Kaohsiung Model”, the other focus of the workshop was to introduce to all participants a self-developed tool called “Management & Visualization of Vector Mosquito Breeding Sites Using Google Maps”, which integrated Google map with GPS.On the other hand, Dr. Robbin Lindsay, a research scientist of Public Health Agency of Canada, was also invited to the workshop to deliver a speech entitled “Approaches to Controlling Mosquitoes and Mosquito-Borne Infections in Canada” to share Canada’s experience in dengue fever control.
Dengue fever is a common infectious disease in the tropical and subtropical areas.Among APEC economies, dengue epidemics are seen in Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, and Mexico, where tens of thousands of people become infected with dengue virus every year.
In addition to affecting the health of the people living in these economies, dengue epidemics also result in a heavy economic burden to the economies.Given that dengue fever is a vector-borne disease, as long as any breeding sites are present, the possibilities of dengue outbreaks remain.Therefore, vector control plays a significant role in the prevention and control of dengue epidemics.
APEC economies participating in this workshop include Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Peru, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
Above all, through this workshop, Taiwan CDC hoped to create more opportunities for future collaboration among all APEC member economies and to consolidate its participation and influence over APEC health affairs.