Between August 28 and September 3, the France Public Health Agency recorded 770 clinically suggestive cases of dengue fever in Martinique and 600 in Guadeloupe.

To a much lesser extent, Saint-Martin and Saint-Barthélemy are also affected, with the first confirmed cases on these two islands in the north of the Caribbean arc.

Guadeloupe and Martinique have been in the epidemic phase since mid-August for this tropical disease, which is mainly transmitted by mosquito bites and can manifest itself by high fevers, headaches, body aches, nausea and rashes.

"What is particular during this epidemic is that there are very frequently digestive signs that are associated with pain: nausea, loss of appetite, stomach pain and diarrhea," said on Radio Caraïbes International Professor André Cabié, head of the infectious and tropical diseases department at the University Hospital Center (CHU) of Martinique.

Healthcare professionals are particularly monitoring patients with sickle cell disease, a genetic disease prevalent in black populations in the West Indies, which affects the hemoglobin of red blood cells. "We know that these people are very at risk of severe forms," said Professor Cabié.

"It is really important, from the onset of symptoms, to consult a doctor very quickly to start management as soon as possible," he added.

In Guadeloupe, eight people were hospitalized between August 31 and September 3, and nine in Martinique, where emergency doctors and Samu asked the population to turn to city medicine to relieve emergency room congestion, according to Yannick Brouste, head of emergencies at Martinique University Hospital.

The dengue epidemic continues to spread in the West Indies, where health authorities are monitoring risk profiles of severe © forms PATRICE COPPEE / AFP/Archives

"Usually we are on 120 passages per day, here we are rather on 150 with peaks at 180, which is rather exceptional," he said.

No treatment

"No treatment exists for dengue," Mathilde Melin, deputy head of the Antilles Public Health Unit France, told AFP. "Only protection against mosquitoes is effective."

The health authorities are redoubling their communication message around the right actions to adopt: eliminate, after each rain, the points of stagnant water in which mosquito larvae develop, use repellents, wear long clothes...

Health authorities redouble their communication message around the right actions to adopt to protect themselves from mosquitoes © PATRICE COPPEE / AFP/Archives

The use of insecticides is less effective in combating the proliferation of mosquitoes, according to Anubis Vega-Rua, head of the vector control laboratory at the Institut Pasteur in Guadeloupe, because the mosquito "has developed significant resistance to insecticides".

The use of different molecules since the 1950s, she explains, has eliminated all insects sensitive to these products, leaving only those that resist them to live.

"Chemical control knows a limit here," notes Anubis Vega-Rua, who with other scientists is thinking about "alternative methods" less harmful to biodiversity and the environment, such as sterilization of mosquitoes or inoculation of bacteria.

"It is also necessary that the vectorial control is total on the territory," notes the scientist, referring to the water problems that push the inhabitants to store barrels where mosquitoes can reproduce.

It also calls for the subject to be taken into account in urban planning projects.

If, for the moment, only one species of mosquito vector of dengue, the aedes aegypti, is rampant in the French West Indies, "it is only a matter of time" before the so-called "tiger" mosquito, the aedes albopictus, already present in Europe, arrives on the shores of Guadeloupe and Martinique.

© 2023 AFP