At least 283 people have died from dengue fever in Bangladesh so far in 2023, marking a record number of deaths for the mosquito-borne disease, which caused 281 deaths in all of 2022.
A massive outbreak swept the densely populated South Asian country early this summer, in the middle of the monsoon season, and numbers continue to rise. As of Thursday, August 3, 37,000 people have been infected with the virus – more than half of them from the capital Dhaka – leaving hospitals across the country with a shortage of beds. “The doctors and nurses told us that they don’t have a decent bed available, but they will still treat us if we stay,” Shariful Islam, a relative of a dengue patient, said Friday. “We had no choice” she added.
Currently, there are no vaccines or drugs that specifically treat dengue, but the disease spreads between June and September each year as Bangladesh experiences a peak in rainfall during those months and the Aedes aegypti mosquito (also known as the yellow fever mosquito)which spreads the disease, thrives in standing water.
Submitter:
Bron: Global News
2023-08-06 11:00:45
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