MANILA, Philippines — As dengue fever continues to plague the country, six government agencies joined hands Thursday to look for strategic and coordinated actions against the mosquito-borne viral disease which has killed at least 267 persons nationwide in the last seven months.

This developed after Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) Secretary Jesse M. Robredo, Department of Health (DoH) Secretary Enrique Ona, Department of Education (DepEd) Secretary Armin Luistro, Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) Secretary Ramon Paje, Department of Science and Technology (DoST) Secretary Mario Montejo, and Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) Chairman Francis Tolentino signed the Memorandum of Agreement for an Inter-Agency Cooperation Strategy for Intensifying Anti-Dengue Drive in Barangay Bagbag, Novaliches, Quezon City.

Robredo said there is a need for inter-agency and inter-sectoral partnerships to implement a sustainable and wide-reaching campaign to prevent and control dengue.

“All concerned departments of the government are here today to take a stand and undertake strategies and concrete actions to address the prevalence of dengue,” he said.

Under the agreement, the DILG urges local chief executives to mobilize their Barangay Dengue Brigades that will conduct and supervise house-to-house cleanliness campaign, pass local ordinances for strict observance of cleanliness, monitor the health situation in their respective areas, assist rural health workers in the dissemination of information, and provide assistance for possible patients to be referred to or admitted to the rural health units or devolved hospitals.

The DoH implements dengue control measures and ensures that all hospitals and staff are prepared to handle dengue cases.

The DepEd focuses its campaign in schools by disseminating relevant information to students and parents and ensures proper sanitation and clean surroundings in schools.

The DENR helps in implementing environmental sanitation, while the DoST continues to undertake scientific and technological research and development on how to mitigate the impact of dengue.

The MMDA urges Metro Manila mayors to organize community clean-up in their areas.

After the agreement signing, the six government officials led the clean-up activity in the barangays (villages) to highlight the national campaign against dengue.

From January to August 6 this year, a total of 45,333 dengue cases were recorded nationwide by the DoH, which is a 33.5 percent reduction from the 68,168 cases in the same period last year.

The latest dengue surveillance report of the DoH covering January 1 to August 6 this year posted a total of 45,333 dengue cases nationwide, 34,652 cases of which are in Luzon, 5,091 in the Visayas, and 5,590 in Mindanao.

Meanwhile, scientists disclosed that injecting bacteria into mosquitoes can block them from transmitting the dengue virus and help control the spread of the disease that kills 20,000 annually in more than 100 countries.

In two papers published in the journal Nature on Thursday, researchers in Australia showed how female mosquitoes infected with the Wolbachia bacteria passed the bug easily to their offspring, making them all dengue-free.

They said such infected mosquitoes should be released into the wild, so that the spread of dengue to people may be reduced.

“The main feature we saw was their ability to reduce dengue transmission,” said Professor Scott O’Neill, lead author and science faculty dean at the Monash University. “It almost completely abolished dengue virus in the body of the mosquito.”

In their experiment, O’Neill and colleagues injected the bacteria into more than 2,500 embryos of so-called Aedes aegypti mosquitoes that can spread dengue fever.

After they hatched, they were treated to blood meals laced with the dengue virus, and none picked up the virus.

“The (Wolbachia) bacteria don’t spread environmentally, it gets passed on from mother to children through the eggs,” O’Neill told Reuters by telephone.

“When an infected male mates with an uninfected female, all her eggs die. That gives an indirect benefit to the females with Wolbachia because when they mate with infected males, their eggs hatch normally ... all their eggs have Wolbachia in them so Wolbachia gets more and more common with every generation,” he said.

O’Neill said there were two theories to explain why the Wolbachia was able to block the uptake of dengue.

One, the Wolbachia boosts the mosquito’s immune system and protects it from viruses like dengue.

Two, the Wolbachia competes with dengue for food inside the mosquito, making it harder for the dengue virus to replicate.

More than 50 million people in over 100 countries fall sick and 20,000 die each year from dengue fever.

There is no vaccine or specific treatment for the disease.

The only way of prevention is to control mosquito populations through eliminating breeding sites and insecticides.

O’Neill’s team released nearly 299,000 infected mosquitoes in January at more than 370 sites in northeastern Australia, and the bacteria spread into the wild mosquito population successfully, with their offspring also infected over a three-month period.

The team is seeking approval to release such infected mosquitoes into dengue-endemic sites in Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia and Brazil to see if it would reduce rates of dengue transmission in people.

“It is an alternative strategy for dengue control which could be low-cost and sustainable and suitable for deployment in large urban cities in developing world,” O’Neill said.

“With any control (measure) over time, we might expect them to become less effective, like insecticides. “We don’t know how long that might take to occur. If it provides effective control for 20-30 years, that is still a very good step forward for dengue control,” he added.

In Cotabato City, the local government is monitoring at least seven villages considered as dengue high-risk areas.

The City Epidemiology and Surveillance Unit (CESU) identified the dengue hotspots as the villages of Kalanganan Mother, Poblacions 3, 5, 6, 7, 9, and Rosary Heights Mother.

To date, the CESU has recorded 140 dengue cases in Cotabato City, most of which occurred from March to July, this year. (With reports from Jenny F. Manongdo and PNA/Xinhua)