The Department of Health-Davao Center for Health Development reported on Monday that there have been 1,412 Hand Foot and Mouth Disease (HFMD) cases recorded from January 1 to February 11, 2023 with 166 barangays noted with clustering of cases.
“The pattern is for the first month of January this year we saw an increasing pattern of HFMD and that is throughout the region,” said Dr. Gerna Manatad, DOH-11 assistant regional director, during the Kapehan sa Dabaw at SM City Davao on Monday.
Based on the monitoring, the Regional Epidemiology and Surveillance Unit (RESU) reported 296 cases of HFMD in Davao City, 415 in Davao de Oro; 374 in Davao del Norte; 25 in Davao del Sur; 200 in Davao Occidental and 102 in Davao Oriental.
However, no death has been reported.
652 of these HFMD cases are females and 760 are males, which affected the age group from 0 to 9 years old.
“The data also is coming from the different local epidemiology and surveillance unit from the public health stations and hospitals. HFMD is part of the monitoring of the DOH because it tends to affect children and has the tendency to spread and infect even adults,” Manatad said.
The most common symptoms of HFMD are nausea, sore throat, loss of appetite, weakness, and blisters. Cases of HFMD are usually mild but a child can experience dehydration.
One can contract HFMD by touching contaminated objects or surfaces; coughing or sneezing of a person with HFMD; touching the water from the blisters; and touching the feces of a person with HFMD.
