AT least 14 Filipinos die everyday in the past 10 years from water-borne diseases, according to data from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA).
Based on PSA data, water-borne diseases such as typhoid and paratyphoid fever; bloody diarrhea; cholera; viral hepatitis; and leptospirosis killed a total of 53,066 Filipinos between 2010 and 2019.
The estimate did not include rotavirus, which killed 226 Filipinos between 2015 and 2019. The data for rotavirus was only collected starting in 2015.
“[Water borne] diseases [are] transmitted through water contaminated with human or animal waste,” PSA said in the technical notes for the Compendium of Philippine Environment Statistics (CPES) containing the data.
Based on PSA data, bloody diarrhea killed the most number of Filipinos with a total of 37,622 deaths in the past 10 years.
The PSA said there was an average of 50,058 annual averages of reported cases of water-borne diseases from 2010 to 2019.
Among these diseases, acute bloody diarrhea contributed 71,774 cases or 85 percent in 2019.
Meanwhile, an average of at least three Filipinos die everyday from vector-borne diseases in the past decade.
The PSA, citing World Health Organization data, said that vector-borne diseases are caused by parasites, viruses and bacteria that are transmitted by vectors. Vectors are living organisms that transmit infectious pathogens between humans or from animals to humans.
“Many of these vectors are bloodsucking insects, which ingest disease-producing microorganisms during a blood meal from an infected host [human or animal] and later transmit it into a new host, after the pathogen has replicated. Often, once a vector becomes infectious, they are capable of transmitting the pathogen for the rest of their life during each subsequent bite/blood meal,” PSA said.
Vector-borne diseases between 2010 and 2019 killed a total of 12,062 Filipinos. This only includes data for Dengue and Malaria.
Of the two vector-borne diseases, Dengue killed the most at 11,832 Filipinos in the past 10 years. Malaria killed 230 Filipinos during the period.
“Dengue and Malaria are vector-borne diseases with 208,170 and 2,308 annual average number of cases recorded from 2010 to 2019, respectively. In 2019, 22.5 percent of reported dengue cases were children between 5 to 9 years old,” PSA said.
Another vector-borne disease, Chikungunya disease killed five Filipinos between 2016 and 2019. However, there were 1,138 cases per 100,000 population.
PSA said based on the WHO, the disease is also transmitted to humans through infected mosquitoes. It is caused by the chikungunya virus, an RNA virus that causes infected persons to suffer fever and severe joint pain.
In some cases, infected persons experience muscle pain, joint swelling, headache, nausea, fatigue and rashes. It is considered a debilitating disease that can vary in duration.
The CPES-Human Settlements and Environmental Health compiles statistics on the environment where people live and work, especially those that detail their living conditions and environmental health.
This component has two subcomponents: human settlements and environmental health. Human settlements cover statistics describing the basic services and infrastructure put up where humans live and work.
The data deals with the totality of the human community where people reside, may it be large cities, towns, or villages.
The subcomponent on environmental health focuses on how the environmental factors and processes affect and alter the health of an individual.
The statistics compiled under this subcomponent were morbidity such as incidence and prevalence and mortality of certain types of diseases.
Image courtesy of Roy Domingo