There’s no dengue, media criticised

The Director General of Health, Leausa Dr. Take Naseri, has criticised members of the media over what he described as irresponsible reporting of the potential chikungunya outbreak.

The criticism comes as the health sector is monitoring a situation concerning the chikungunya virus, of which there have been no confirmed cases yet in Samoa.

There are suspicions with the cases so far only “clinically diagnosed” – a tentative diagnosis made on the basis of knowledge obtained by medical history and physical examination alone, without benefit of laboratory tests or x-ray films.

During a press conference held to both update the public about the potential outbreak and to specifically to address the media’s reporting on it yesterday, Leausa said some outlets had gotten their reports wrong.

One outlet in particular was singled out, the Talamua Media & Publications, for its flagrant false-to-fact report that Leausa had confirmed a case of dengue fever.

The news item was written by journalist Lagi Keresoma.

“We are disappointed,” he said.

He said what only made it worse is that his Ministry had done much work to be as open as they can with the media.

“The fact (is) that we try our best to be open to the media,” he said.

“So we can open up to the public and educate the public. We rely a lot on the media cause they have ways of getting the attention of people.”

Asked for a comment yesterday, Talamua owner, Apulu Lance Polu said he takes anything to do with health and health information, especially if it is incorrect information, as a serious matter by his standards.

He said he would need to talk to Ms. Keresoma.

Late yesterday afternoon, Apulu emailed to say that “it’s obvious the info we used for last week’s story was incorrect so we have quickly uploaded a correction using the information from this morning’s (yesterday) press conference.”

“The updated story is on our website now and I hope will put the whole issue in correct perspective.”

“I regret if this has alarmed a few people. It was our mistake.”

During the press conference yesterday, Leausa said what was so damning about Talamua’s report was not only was dengue fever more contagious than chikungunya, it had a much higher case fatality rate.

“A case fatality rate is the proportion of deaths within a designated population of ‘cases’ over the course of the disease,” he said.

“This (report) is scary because dengue kills…it is more contagious. We never mentioned any dengue outbreak…and then there is a dengue case that is ‘confirmed’ in Samoa…and this is scary in the sense…cause Dengue kills it carries a high mortality rate.”

“But as of today – there is no dengue. So we need to correct that.”

“So I think we need to be clear when you leave here that there is no dengue as is reported on Talumua Online.”

When Ms. Keresoma arrived at the press conference, Leausa took the opportunity to address the issue of her report with her directly.

He implored her to check her facts before she published her articles.

“Now our counterparts are starting to complain on not reporting a case of dengue fever when they see you are reporting it.”

“I feel that before you go online, you need to get your facts right. It’s not appropriate that you made it dengue when there’s no dengue at all.”

Leausa said that this was not a good situation and that his department had been getting phone calls from people involved in the upcoming Small Island Developing States (S.I.D.S.) conference.

“People that are calling us are the people involved in the S.I.D.S., All these S.I.D.S. countries. This is scary when we talk about dengue because dengue has four types and it’s been five years since the last outbreak.”

Leusa said dengue fever is quite fatal.

“So I think that you should apologise and correct your news and we expect to see that online please,” he said to Talamua.

During the course of the press conference, he also chastised other news agencies for reporting that his Ministry had confirmed cases Chikungunya virus.

“As of today we don’t even have a confirmed case of the less fatal chikungunya – only clinical diagnoses,” he said. “We have called this press conference to give you an update and reassure our public of the current situation of a potential outbreak of chickunguna.”