Weekly The Generation, Year 1, Issue 13
November 28, 2023
Dhaka, Bangladesh: Bangladesh is undergoing its worst-ever dengue outbreak in history, with hospitals packed to the brim and the death toll rising. Last Wednesday, the country recorded 24 deaths – the highest in a day – from the mosquito-borne disease.
While the disease does not spread from person to person, a mosquito that bites an infected patient then becomes a carrier, and can transmit dengue to others it bites. That makes places with a high concentration of dengue patients — such as the hospital where Mayna works — more dangerous for those who are not yet infected.
Health experts are alarmed as dengue usually subsides in the South Asian region when the annual monsoon rains stop by the end of September.
As of Monday, at least 1,549 people – including 156 children, from newborns up to those aged 15 – have died of the disease in Bangladesh, which has recorded a total of 301,255 dengue cases this year, according to the government’s Directorate General of Health Service (DGHS).
The record deaths are roughly five times last year’s tally of 281 fatalities – the highest in a single year in Bangladesh’s history – until the outbreak this year. The previous highest number of cases in one year – 1,01,354 – was reported back in 2019.
“I have never witnessed a dengue outbreak of this proportion,”It’s very unusual to see such a large number of dengue patients in November.”
The DGHS data says 65 percent of the cases reported this year were from outside of Dhaka – the first time the capital had fewer cases than the rest of the country.
Public health expert and former DGHS director Dr ANM Nuruzzaman told Al Jazeera this year’s outbreak is no less than an epidemic.
“The problem is the severity of dengue has sort of gone out of the public and media’s radar as the country is going through a political turmoil ahead of the next election,” he said.
“Dengue is a serious crisis as the pattern and severity of the disease have changed and turned to worse. The government should have declared it a public emergency long ago,” said Nuruzzaman. Government officials claim that they have done everything to check dengue’s spread and that declaring it a public emergency or epidemic would not have made much difference.
“All the government hospitals across the country were instructed to open special dengue wards in the beginning of August. The health ministry also allocated an emergency budget to fight the outbreak,” Dr Mohammad Robed Amin, director of noncommunicable disease at DGHS, told Al Jazeera.
“The problem is our country’s healthcare system has serious limitations because we are a large population and it’s almost impossible to ensure healthcare and treatment for all,” he said.
Amin noted that cases and deaths this year are “abnormally high” for several reasons. “The first and foremost reason is the overwhelming prevalence of Den-2 type strain of dengue among the patients,” he said.
Dengue has four types: Den-1, Den-2, Den-3 and Den-4. A person becomes immune to a dengue type after infection, but not to other types.
Another reason behind the high fatalities is the outbreak in rural areas, he said.
Source: Al Jazeera
