Clinical Refresher on the Updated Dengue Management Guidelines

Infectious disease specialists from the Ministry of Health and the World Health Organization (South Pacific) recently completed a training-of-trainer program with selected clinicians from the Government and the Private health sector on the updated WHO clinical management guidelines for dengue fever.

With the surge in dengue fever case numbers in past weeks, the Ministry recognized the need to impart the updated dengue clinical management guidelines to all doctors around the country in efforts to standardize and further upscale the Ministry’s health case responses to those afflicted by dengue fever.

33 doctors and 30 senior nurses from the Ministry of Health and also 4 doctors from the Private health sector participated at the training-of-trainers workshop. The trainings were conducted for half a day on three separate days last week in The Northern divisions, the Western division and also at the Colonial War Memorial hospital in Suva.

The training focused extensively on the revised attributes of the guidelines on dengue fever clinical management espoused by WHO. The emphasis on the principles of dengue management centred on understanding the clinical course of the disease where the critical period which would require very close patient monitoring, was 24 -48 hours after the initial fever or febrile phase of the disease.

From the analysis of the post-test evaluation exercise of the training-of-trainers initiative, the Ministry is confident that the trainers are well equipped to filter key information from the updated clinical management guidelines for dengue, to their peers.

The Ministry anticipates that this training-of-trainers initiative will further enhance the management of dengue fever cases, reducing the burden of illness and also fatalities amongst afflicted individuals in our communities.