Almost 2 billion people at risk from dengue in Asia

Today Online 24 Sep 08;

MANILA — Nearly two billion people in the Asia-Pacific region will be at risk from dengue fever unless governments do more to fight the disease, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said yesterday.

According to the United Nations agency, of the 2.5 billion people at risk globally, some 1.8 billion live in the Western Pacific.

Ninety-eight per cent of all dengue cases — and 99 per cent of all dengue deaths — in the region between 2001 and 2004 occured in Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines, Cambodia, Laos, Singapore, French Polynesia, Fiji, New Caledonia and China.

WHO intends to ask the 37 countries and territories that make up its Western Pacific section to endorse a regional strategy for dealing with the mosquito-borne virus, which it deems among 40 emerging diseases of global importance.

A dengue pandemic swept across the region between 1991 and 2004, peaking at 350,000 cases in 1998, WHO said.

It said: “Many Asia-Pacific countries lack adequate resources and have limited response capacities” against the virus.

The WHO said in discussion papers at a regional committee meeting in Manila that dengue “has greatly expanded over the last three decades” owing to changes in weather patterns that expanded the habitat of the Aedes aegypti mosquito which carries the virus.

Other key factors were migration, demographic changes, and rapid growth in urban areas. AFP