As you pack for that fabulous Caribbean destination this summer, you might want to keep tabs on what's going on with regards to recent warnings about the spread of dengue fever. The near epidemic proportions of this disease are being blamed on the unusually warm weather and constant rains.
The disease-carrying mosquitos explode during rainy seasons and can breed in water-filled flower pots, plastic bags, and cans year-round. It only takes one mosquito bite to infect someone with the disease. The virus is not contagious and cannot be spread directly from person to person. There must be a person-to-mosquito-to-another-person pathway.
So far, there have been an alarming number of dengue-related deaths reported throughout the Caribbean and unfortunately, health officials worry, that more are expected as the rainy season advances.
Puerto Rico, a popular tourist destination particularly during the summer months is experiencing the worst dengue outbreak in more than a decade. Thus far, about five people have died and another estimated 6,300 cases of the virus is suspected. "We are having a really large epidemic," said Kay Tomashek, epidemiology section chief of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's dengue branch in Puerto Rico. In 1998, the island's worst dengue outbreak, by the end of that year, it had sickened 17,000 and killed 19.
In the Dominican Republic, 27 degue deaths have been reported thus far, four of them children. Senen Caba, the president of the Dominican Medical Association, reported more than 7,000 cases of dengue fever in his country to date. Caba tells the Associated Press, "Hospitals are flooded with fever cases. Emergency rooms are overflowing."
Trinidad health officials report one death so far and hospitals are running out of bed space for its dengue victims. Jamaica's Ministry of Health is keeping on top of the dengue incidences and states, that there is no cause for concern at this point in time. French Guiana, Guadeloupe and St. Maarten have also disclosed an alarming number of dengue cases.
According to the Pan American Health Organization there are nearly 17,000 cases of dengue cases across the Caribbean this year alone.
On these shores, health officials are on high level alert and concerned, that the virus which causes a rash, high fever, severe leg and joint pain, headache, low heart rate and blood pressure, which once disappeared from the U.S., may make a comeback in a big way.
In Miami, the city where over fifty percent of its residents are of Caribbean descent, someone was tested last week for dengue fever but the results came back negative.
...And so we wait....
