Expert Calls To Activate A Cleaning Plan For Rains And Floods In The DR

An urgent cleaning or hygiene plan that must cover the environments of institutions, companies and homes is currently necessary to activate in the country, after the rains and floods that mainly affected Greater Santo Domingo.

This was proposed by Dr. José R. Yunen, an expert in critical care and preventive health, warning about the risk of the emergence of diseases and the resurgence of others that are affecting the country, such as dengue, leptospirosis and the influenza virus, caused by these environmental conditions.

Referring to the great flood that affected Santo Domingo and other areas this Friday night, due to the rains caused by the incidence of a trough and a tropical wave, he said that the environment is conducive to epidemic outbreaks.

“At this time, hygiene of the environment is imposed, both in companies, hospital areas and homes and doing like the Japanese, trying to make sure that the sidewalk in front of your house is also clean””, he said.

The specialist stressed that tropical diseases cannot be forgotten because there may be an increase in dengue and humid conditions crowd people and cause viral diseases such as influenza, which is a coronavirus, to spread much more easily.

He understands that it is important to open the door to vaccination and that hopefully it will be placed massively against influenza, the quadrivalent, which includes protection against more strains of the virus, with the opening of more options for immunization.

He recalled that with the floods, rats come out of their burrows, whose contaminated urine can lead to the spread of leptospirosis in the population, so hand hygiene and food and canned food before using it must be taken in account for the population.

Currently, the country is registering a significant increase in dengue cases, which until the middle of last month had caused 43 deaths and over seven thousand affected, as well as respiratory diseases, attributed on a larger scale to the circulation of influenza viruses of type A and B.

Heavy rains

On November 4th, in a matter of hours more rain fell in Greater Santo Domingo than half of an entire rainy month, which collapsed the transit in the city, according to the measurements of the central station of the National Directorate of Meteorology.

In those three hours, 70 millimeters of water fell on Santo Domingo and the National District, when the average in the month of November averaged 132 millimeters, according to those statistics.

Roads such as 27 de Febrero, John F. Kennedy, Abraham Lincoln and Máximo Gómez avenues, which cross the city north-south and east-west, have become impossible to reach, a situation that is worsened by the desperation of drivers who have taken all the lanes. to try to move forward, but blocking traffic.

The director of the Emergency Operations Center (COE), Juan Manuel Méndez, reported that they have been able to confirm the death of four people who died because of the heavy rains on November 4th.

Also read – Heavy rains in Santo Domingo causes four deaths