The Department of Health (DoH) on Saturday welcomed the development of a supposed anti-dengue drug by Filipino researchers.
“We appreciate the DoST (Department of Science and Technology) for coming up with that supposed medicine for dengue,” said Health Secretary Francisco Duque III in an interview.
The said anti-dengue drug is reportedly the first of its kind in the world and might be available in the market by the end of next year.
The research was said to be part of the DoST’s ‘Tuklas Lunas’ program aimed at strengthening “the capacities of both researchers and the local industry in drug discovery and development.”
“We will appreciate [it] even better if they can send us a literature of what are the effects of this new anti-dengue drug purportedly has,” said Duque.
Meanwhile, Health Undersecretary Rolando Enrique Domingo said that the DoH is looking forward to the drug’s full development as it may help in addressing the dengue problem in the Philippines.
“The DoH welcomes the research being done by DoST and our local scientists. We are very excited and look forward to the development of the drug,” he said.
In a related development, the DoH said that it already recorded a total of 414,532 dengue cases nationwide from January 1 to November 30.
The figure is 86 percent higher as compared to the 222,849 cases recorded during the same period last year, the DoH-Epidemiology Bureau said in its latest Dengue Surveillance Report.
The report also showed that Calabarzon had the most number of cases with 70,216; followed by Western Visayas with 58,093; National Capital Region with 38,576; Central Luzon with 34,732; and Central Visayas with 28,306.
Last August, the DoH declared a national dengue epidemic amid the increasing number of dengue cases nationwide. (Analou De Vera)
