# 4892
The latest report from the CDC indicates a slight leveling off – at least in the last reporting week – of the number of new cases of suspected Dengue on the island of Puerto Rico, albeit at a level far exceeding the epidemic threshold.
The number of confirmed fatalities has reached 20, exceeding the 19 known deaths from the last big Dengue epidemic on the island in 1998.
Another 14 deaths are being investigated.
According to local media reports, Chief Epidemiologist Carmen de la Seda has blamed “unprecedented rains” over the past few months for the rise in Dengue cases, but rejected the idea that the epidemic is out of control.
Better surveillance, and analysis from the CDC, she suggested, may be turning up cases that in past years might have been missed.
The Health Department has acquired 10 new mosquito fogging machines which they are lending out to municipalities unable to afford their own.
Meanwhile an extensive educational campaign is underway to get the residents to destroy mosquito breeding habitats and to take measures to protect themselves against mosquito bites.
The problem isn’t restricted to Puerto Rico, of course.
Many regions of South and Central America, and the Caribbean are dealing with dengue outbreaks that are often more severe than what is currently being reported in Puerto Rico.
PAHO issued an Epidemiological Alert: Update on Dengue Outbreaks in the Americas (8 September 2010), stating:
During the first semester of 2010, the epidemiological situation of dengue in the Region has displayed unstable behavior, with intense outbreaks of dengue in various countries of the Region. The climatological conditions have remained favorable for the proliferation of the Aedes aegypti mosquito – its transmitting agent – while certain unusual alterations have been observed in its seasonality, where, since the beginning of the year, Central American countries and Caribbean islands have been affected during periods that are considered unusual.
In June of this year, a CDC report (see MMWR: Travel Associated Dengue Surveillance 2006-2008) stated:
`Clinically recognized cases of travel-associated dengue likely underestimate the risk for importation because many dengue infections are asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic’.
Dengue’s spread has increased dramatically over the past 50 years, and since the 1950s a rare, but far more serious form of the disease – DHF or (Dengue Hemorrhagic Fever) – has emerged.
None of this should dissuade you from making that long anticipated trip to South America, Florida or the Caribbean, of course. The odds of acquiring a mosquito-borne disease while visiting these locales are actually quite small.
But when millions of people make that trek, invariably some small number of tourists may become infected.
And if they return home to a region where the Aedes aegypti or the Aedes Albopictus mosquito (both Dengue vectors) are found, they have at least the potential to introduce the virus to a new area.
Which is probably how Dengue ended up returning to south Florida after an absence of more than 60 years (see Update On The Florida Dengue Cases).
Those who travel to or live in areas where mosquitoes are present are reminded that to protect yourself from mosquitoes, follow the `5 D’s’:
