2023-10-05 17:50:43
The viral epidemic of pink eye, or conjunctivitis, is spreading, affecting hundreds of thousands in Vietnam, India and Pakistan.
For months amid summer heat waves and record rainfall, infections have been rising, as health officials in many countries struggle to curb highly contagious pathogens that seem to thrive in high humidity.
By September, tens of thousands of schools in Vietnam, India and Pakistan were briefly closed in an emergency effort to stop the spread of the virus. On the first day of September in the state of Punjab in northwestern India, health officials in India counted 13,000 new cases of pink eye. During the entire month, the city recorded more than 86,000 cases.
In Pakistan, the number of those afflicted reached approximately 400,000 people nationwide.
As for Vietnam, officials say that they recorded more than 63,000 cases of viral conjunctivitis from January to September, an increase of more than 15% over the same period of the previous year.
While pink eye can be caused by bacteria or viruses, viral infections are particularly contagious. Some of them can live on surfaces for 30 days, and spread easily following rubbing the eye just once with a contaminated hand.
People with conjunctivitis usually have one or two eyes affected. Symptoms include redness, eye pain, swollen eyelids, blurred vision, sensitivity to light, and watery discharge.
Aside from frequent hand washing and disinfecting surfaces, there is not much that can be done to prevent the spread of the virus.
There is no cure for pink eye, which means patients must simply wait two weeks or more for their immune system to fight off the virus.
Staying at home during this time is essential to avoid spreading the disease more widely in the community.
In severe cases, the cornea can become chronically inflamed, leading to long-term vision problems.
Although these cases are rare, hospital officials in Vietnam say that 20% of the cases they have seen in children involve serious complications.
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