Vietnam concerned over spike in dengue fever cases
HANOI - Health authorities in Vietnam expressed concern over the growing numbers of people infected with dengue fever, the mosquito-borne disease that has killed seven people this year in the country.
Pham Ngoc Dinh, deputy director of the Hanoi-based Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology, said 4,199 people had been infected since the beginning of the year, a 90 percent increase compared to the same period last year.
The worst affected areas were in the southern Mekong Delta region, where moist and humid conditions provide ideal breeding grounds for mosquitoes. The region accounted for over 90 percent of the cases and all the deaths.
"Dengue fever is an annual occurrence in Vietnam but every three to five years there are strong outbreaks and this could explain the high number of cases in the first two-and-a-half months of this year," Dinh said.
Some 383 people died in the last such epidemic in 1998, which infected 234,866 people across the country, according to the World Health Organization.
"We are afraid that the numbers will keep increasing in the coming months," Dinh said, adding that it was essential to eliminate pools of dirty, stagnant water and other unhygienic conditions that allow the mosquitoes to thrive.
"We are conducting studies to see if the virus carried by the Aedes aegypti mosquito was different from previous years," he said.
Usually dengue fever strikes in April, the start of the wet season.
Characterized by painful joints, fever and a rash, the debilitating symptoms of dengue usually begin within a week of a carrier mosquito's bite and last for seven days.
But it also comes in a more deadly haemorrhagic form, usually on second infection with another of the four types of dengue virus.
More than 450 people have died from the disease in Indonesia this year, while over 35,000 others have been infected.
The disease is an annual rainy season hazard for Indonesians but the number of infections this year is more than double the same period last year.
Agence France Presse - March 18, 2004.
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