Back to the mosquito net?

The camp of former President Joseph Estrada is seething because they sense that the one-page advertisement from an unknown source that appeared in several national dailies on Wednesday was intended to condition the minds of the people that Erap will be convicted. The decision of the Sandiganbayan on the plunder charge against him is due for release any time now. Actually, yes, the wordings of the ad do hint that the one who crafted it already knows what the verdict will be, and realizes the need to calm down people, particularly Estrada loyalists, before they hear it.

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It will be difficult to believe that the advertisement was an objective one, since there doesn't seem to be any indication that the anti-Estrada groups are ready to burst into revolution in case he is acquitted. It seems that many of them, those people who had worked hard to get him out of Malacañang and install Madame Arroyo instead, no longer care what the judgment will be. In fact, some are saying that he has served so many years already, while others admit they are no longer sure that yanking him out was the best thing to happen in this country. Anyway, what we in the sidelines should do is to watch and wait only.

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Back to basics - that is how the latest recommendation of health experts working on the resurgence of malaria in some parts of the country sounds to me. And you know what the representatives of the World Health Organization, the Department of Health, and the Pilipinas Shell Foundation Inc. said? They said people there should go back to using mosquito nets! Yes, the long-forsaken and forgotten defense against mosquitoes that our grandfolks used to keep the pest away. I do remember using mosquito nets when we were children, especially during vacations at our grandparents farm in Pontevedra. It was fun to play games under the nets, but we all balked at having to set them up before sleeping, and take them down in the morning. Yet now, decades later, the most respected international agencies as far as health and medicine are concerned, are recognizing the practicality and effectiveness of the old mosquito net.

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But it's not only malaria that mosquitoes bring, and it is not in every case of mosquito bite that mosquito nets can be effective. There is the dengue-carrying mosquito that can give you a worse disease. This one comes out in the daytime, so who can protect himself with a net when he has to go around doing his business? Night-roaming mosquitoes can be kept out by nets, but the aedes egypti with its dengue cargo prowls by day. By the way, we do have some dengue cases and a few fatalities now, but, one country being also plagued by it, is Singapore. Would you believe? Singapore, a very clean, place, almost clinical and rarified, you might say, is now plagued by dengue! And it has gone into epidemic levels, too, wire reports say. From June 24 to 30 alone, 381 cases were reported, and there were 3,597 cases in the first six months of this year, according to the country's Health Ministry. In 2005, records show that 13,000 were infected and 19 died. And we thought dengue only strikes in poor countries.

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Meanwhile, journalists all over the world and elated over the news that Alan Johnston of the British Broadcasting Corporation has been released at last by his Palestinian captors. Johnston had been snatched and held at the Gaza Strip by extremists who subjected him to intense mental torture for 116 days. Being a journalist, he was able to describe his experience in the most vivid terms, but as a genuine one, only told the truth, without exaggerating anything or embellishing it for media consumption. Now that he has come out of it alive, I have the feeling that some of his colleagues actually envy him.

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I hear that the Saudi Arabian government has indicated that it is willing to hire nurses from the Philippines, even those who had taken the tainted June 2006 examination. There must be a dearth of nurses there for them to make that concession. I wouldn't encourage any relative or friend of mine who is a nurse, or who has children who are nurses, to go to Saudi, though. Stories I have heard from those who have been there say nurses, especially young women, face a lot of problem there, especially from male patients who seem to gather strength when a girl gets into their room alone to administer medicine. That's just a warning, and some may not listen, especially if they like to be challenged.*

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