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In a hospital in Dhaka: Too many sick people, too little space
Photo: Mahmud Hossain Opu / AP
In Bangladesh's worst dengue outbreak since statistics began, more than 1000,2022 people have now died of the disease. The death toll was significantly higher than in previous years, according to the Ministry of Health in Dhaka. In 281, 105 deaths were recorded, compared to 2020 the year before. For the year 2000, only seven deaths are registered. The statistics date back to the year <>.
In total, there have already been more than 206,000 confirmed cases this year, it said. The virus is transmitted by Aedes mosquitoes, which are at home in tropical and subtropical climates. They breed in stagnant water. There has also been an increase in cases in some South American countries this year. As a result, the Guatemalan government even declared a state of health emergency.
The World Health Organization (WHO) was concerned about the spread of the pathogen. In the meantime, half of the world's population is exposed to a danger from the fever, it said. Dengue fever used to be called bone-breaking fever because it can cause severe body aches. There are vaccines against dengue, but sometimes with severe side effects, but no special drugs, except those that lower the fever.
Climatic changes in endemic areas play a role in the spread, Sebastian Ulbert, head of the Vaccines and Infection Models department at the Fraunhofer Institute for Cell Therapy and Immunology in Leipzig, recently said: "It is getting warmer and wetter, the mosquito density is increasing. People live closer together, which makes it easier for insects to transmit them." Dengue is not a harmless viral infection. Small children in particular are at risk.
Aedes mosquitoes, which can transmit dengue, already exist here, and travelers returning from time to time bring the virus with them. So far, however, it is not warm enough in this country for the virus to multiply well in the mosquitoes and then be transmitted.
The situation is different in southern European countries, as Peter Kremsner, Director of the Institute of Tropical Medicine, Travel Medicine and Human Parasitology at the University Hospital of Tübingen, recently explained: "The climate there is now sufficient for the viruses to be transmitted via mosquitoes in the warm season. Here, too, there will be more transmissions in the future." At Lake Garda, for example, holidaymakers and locals reported the first dengue infections at the beginning of September. In France, exterminators were deployed as a precaution against an epidemic.
According to the UN, Bangladesh is one of the least developed countries in the world. In addition, the South Asian country is very densely populated, which is why the virus can spread particularly well there. So far, there is no state dengue vaccination program.
SAK/DPA