PAHO warns of increase in dengue cases in the Caribbean

The Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (PA­HO) is warn­ing of an up­surge in dengue cas­es in the Amer­i­c­as in­clud­ing Bar­ba­dos and the French is­lands of Mar­tinique and Guade­loupe.

It says as of March 26, this year, over 3.5 mil­lion cas­es and more than 1,000 deaths have been re­port­ed in the re­gion.

“This is cause for con­cern, as it rep­re­sents three times more cas­es than those re­port­ed for the same pe­ri­od in 2023, a record year with more than 4.5 mil­lion cas­es re­port­ed in the re­gion,” said PA­HO Di­rec­tor Jar­bas Bar­bosa.

PA­HO said while dengue is on the rise through­out Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean, the hard­est-hit coun­tries are Brazil, Paraguay and Ar­genti­na, which ac­count for 92 per cent of cas­es and 87 per cent of deaths.

This in­crease is at­trib­uted to the high­er trans­mis­sion sea­son in the south­ern hemi­sphere when the Aedes ae­gyp­ti mos­qui­to vec­tor of dengue thrives due to warm and rainy weath­er.

How­ev­er, Dr Bar­bosa cau­tioned that “we are al­so see­ing an uptick in cas­es in coun­tries such as Bar­ba­dos, Cos­ta Ri­ca, Guade­loupe, Guatemala, Mar­tinique and Mex­i­co, where trans­mis­sion is usu­al­ly high­er in the sec­ond half of the year”.

The PA­HO Di­rec­tor al­so not­ed the pres­ence of the mos­qui­to vec­tor and cas­es in new ge­o­graph­i­cal ar­eas, rais­ing con­cerns that some coun­tries may not be pre­pared to face an in­crease in trans­mis­sion.

Sev­er­al en­vi­ron­men­tal and so­cial fac­tors con­tribute to the spread of dengue, in­clud­ing ris­ing tem­per­a­tures, ex­treme weath­er events, and the El Niño phe­nom­e­non. Rapid pop­u­la­tion growth and un­planned ur­ban­iza­tion al­so play a cru­cial role: poor hous­ing con­di­tions and in­ad­e­quate wa­ter and san­i­ta­tion ser­vices cre­ate mos­qui­to breed­ing sites through dis­card­ed ob­jects that can col­lect wa­ter.

PA­HO main­tains rig­or­ous sur­veil­lance of dengue in the re­gion and has is­sued nine epi­demi­o­log­i­cal alerts in the past 12 months, pro­vid­ing es­sen­tial guid­ance to Mem­ber States on dis­ease pre­ven­tion and con­trol.

The pres­ence of all four dengue serotypes in the re­gion in­creas­es the risk of epi­demics and se­vere forms of the dis­ease. The si­mul­ta­ne­ous cir­cu­la­tion of two or more dengue serotypes has been ob­served in 21 coun­tries and ter­ri­to­ries of the Amer­i­c­as.

Dr Bar­bosa em­pha­sized the im­por­tance of tak­ing prompt ac­tion to pre­vent and con­trol dengue trans­mis­sion and avoid deaths, not­ing that “de­spite the record in­crease in cas­es in 2023, the dengue case fa­tal­i­ty rate in the re­gion re­mained be­low 0.05%.

“This is very en­cour­ag­ing, con­sid­er­ing the spikes in cas­es we have seen since then,” he said.

PA­HO said this ac­com­plish­ment has been pos­si­ble main­ly due to its sup­port to coun­tries since 2010 through a com­pre­hen­sive strat­e­gy to con­trol dengue and oth­er mos­qui­to-borne dis­eases. This strat­e­gy in­cludes strength­en­ing sur­veil­lance, ear­ly di­ag­no­sis, and time­ly treat­ment and has con­tributed sig­nif­i­cant­ly to sav­ing thou­sands of lives.

The PA­HO Di­rec­tor called for ac­tion, urg­ing in­ten­si­fied ef­forts to elim­i­nate mos­qui­to breed­ing sites and pro­tect against mos­qui­to bites, in­crease pre­pared­ness in health ser­vices for ear­ly di­ag­no­sis and time­ly clin­i­cal man­age­ment, and con­tin­u­ous­ly work to ed­u­cate the pop­u­la­tion about dengue symp­toms and when to seek prompt med­ical at­ten­tion.

“Fac­ing the dengue prob­lem is a task for all sec­tors of so­ci­ety,” Dr. Bar­bosa said, call­ing for “com­mu­ni­ty en­gage­ment in or­der to suc­ceed in our ef­forts”.

CMC/af/ir/2024

WASH­ING­TON, Mar 29, CMC