The Dutch National Institute of Public Health and the Environment has confirmed the first case of dengue infection in the Netherlands. It is known that a woman diagnosed with a tropical disease was previously in the south of France. Symptoms of the infection appeared in her after she returned from vacation. The woman’s current state of health was not specified.
Symptoms of the infection started after returning from vacation
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The Dutch National Institute of Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) does not provide information on the age or current state of health of the woman. It is known that in August she was in La Croix-Valmer near Saint-Tropez. There she was supposed to be bitten by a mosquito, but she did not attach importance to it. The symptoms of the disease did not develop until she returned to Poland.
The reported case of dengue is the first recorded in the Netherlands. RIVM reassures that the disease is very rare and that most people recover within a week.
At the same time, he admits that some of the infections are more serious and may actually be life-threatening.
The disease is transmitted by the tiger mosquito, which has already settled in Europe. Insects of this species have also been discovered in several parts of the Netherlands. The Dutch Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority (NVWA) reported in August that tiger mosquitoes have so far been found in the municipalities of Westland, Lansingerland, Lelystad, Assen and Valkenburg. So far, however, none of them has transmitted dengue.
Dengue fever is an infectious tropical disease caused by the dengue virus. Symptoms include fever, headache, muscle and joint pain, and a characteristic rash similar to that of measles. In isolated cases, the disease leads to life-threatening hemorrhagic fever with haemorrhage, thrombocytopenia and hypovolaemia.
The virus comes in four types. Infection with one usually leaves immunity to it for life, but short-term immunity to other types of the virus. Subsequent infections with different types of dengue increase the risk of serious complications.
Just a few days earlier, the RIVM had confirmed the first case of West Nile virus infection in the history of the Netherlands. A bird found in the Utrecht region was infected. Back then, RIVM also reassured that only “in exceptional cases, the infection can lead to serious neurological discomfort.”
Meanwhile, 45 people were confirmed that the disease was also transmitted by mosquitoes in southern Spain at the end of August. Two of them died. In the most serious cases, this disease causes inflammation of the brain or meninges.
Jesus Aguirre, who is responsible for health services in the government of the Autonomous Community of Andalusia, explained that “the alarmingly rapid spread of the disease” is due to the increase in the number of mosquitoes in Andalusia by around 30%.
West Nile virus is native to Africa. However, in recent decades, it has spread to other parts of the world. In the late 1950s, the virus appeared in Albania, and with it for the first time in Europe. In recent years, the presence of the virus has been confirmed in Italy, Spain, Germany and parts of Eastern Europe.
Its appearance coincided with confirmed cases of invasions by Asian mosquitoes, also known as tiger mosquitoes. These mosquitoes are very aggressive, they are a species of bloodsucker active during the day. It attacks humans, livestock and wild animals, carrying serious diseases, not only West Nile fever.
Last year, the West Nile virus was detected in a 70-year-old resident of Leipzig. The patient had previously suffered from meningitis. This is the first such case in Germany.
A year earlier, a 72-year-old woman had died in the Czech Republic, and tests confirmed that she was infected with the virus that causes West Nile fever. That same year, three people died in the last 48 hours of post-infection complications in Greece, the Greek Keelpno disease control and prevention center reported.
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