Health Minister Chua Jui Meng today appealed to the public to stop accusing his ministry for not doing enough to curb the deadly dengue outbreak, which has claimed over 50 lives since last year.

This is because the Health Ministry is not the only agency responsible to combat the alarming increase in the number of dengue cases as other bodies, such as the Housing and Local Government Ministry, are equally responsible, he said.

The Housing and Local Government Ministry is headed by Ong Ka Ting, a rival member in Chua's political party MCA. Chua and Ong came from the party's opposing factions, Team B and Team A respectively.

"I want the people to stop pointing fingers at each other or at the Health Ministry. Doing that will not help solve anything and save no life. Fighting the dengue problem is a collective responsibility," he told reporters after opening the new health department building of the Federal Territory in Kuala Lumpur this morning.

He explained that the Housing and Local Government Ministry, state governments, local councils and the general public have a very important role to play in fighting dengue.

However, Chua said he was pleased that Ong ( photo ) had instructed his ministry to carry out preventive control work in putting dengue under control.

In recent days, DAP had urged the government to take swift action to contain the dengue outbreak which the opposition party said had claimed at least 62 lives since last year with up to 30,000 confirmed cases.

Highest in 1988

However, according to Health Ministry statistics, dengue fever claimed 54 lives in 2002, with 10,753 confirmed cases reported nationwide. In 2001, there were 8,669 cases with 50 deaths.

Conceding that the cases were increasing, Chua said that the figures last year were still lower than 1998 when 27,379 cases were reported with 58 deaths.

"People do not understand dengue. It is an endemic disease in over 100 countries and affects 50 million people globally including developed countries such as the United States. Only that the press in those countries do not play up the issue," lamented Chua.

Dengue fever causes painful joints, fever and rashes within a week of infection.

Premises inspected

On the action taken to contain the disease, he said the Health Ministry has carried out many activities including educating the public on how to prevent aedes mosquitos from breeding around their homes through awareness programmes.

The ministry also took over the functions of over 50 local councils which had very little or no capacity to control dengue two years ago.

"We will assist councils which face difficulty in controlling the spread of dengue to build up their capacity to control dengue," he said.

According to the minister, last year's statistics of dengue cases reported in the 50 local councils under his ministry was only 17 per cent, out of the 144 local councils nationwide.

Data released by the ministry today also shows that over four million premises were inspected last year. A total of 19,184 premises were slapped with fines with about RM2 million collected.

Last September, the World Health Organisation issued an alert to tropical countries, including Malaysia, to prepare for an increase in the number of dengue cases in view of the unusually wet weather conditions.