Friday, February 2, 2007

Dengue Fever Can Ruin Your Luxury Vacation

Maybe I should call this post "Linda's Not Such Luxury Living", but with this little bit of information I just researched, I hope to save you from a luxury vacation gone bad. Many of us are currently planning a warm weather vacation now that the winter is upon us. I myself am planning a trip to the Caribbean, so this information came to me as a shock. A friend of mine recently returned from her island vacation with an extremely high fever, fatigue, the shakes, and spots on her body. After being taken to the hospital, she was diagnosed with Dungue fever which was caused by a mosquito bite. After a few days, her white blood cell count dropped so low she had to be hospitalized. I have never heard of this disease, since I lead a pretty sheltered life, so I pulled some information off the CDC web site to learn a little more about it. I am including the information below for you to read too. Seems kind of strange to be buying bug spray with DEET in the middle of winter, but I know I will be packing that before I leave along with all of the other stomach and headache items I have already packed.

Dengue Fever

Description

Dengue fever and dengue hemorrhagic fever (DHF) are viral diseases transmitted by Aedes mosquitoes, usually Ae. aegypti. The four dengue viruses (DEN-1 through DEN-4) are immunologically related, but do not provide cross-protective immunity against each other.

Occurrence

Dengue, a rapidly expanding disease in most tropical and subtropical areas of the world, has become the most important arboviral disease of humans. More than 2.5 billion persons now live in areas at risk of infection, and attack rates for reported disease in epidemics are in the range of 1 per thousand to 1 per hundred of the population. Infection rates (that is, proportion of the population that is infected, including persons who do not get severe symptoms or are not reported) can be five- to ten-fold greater. The case-fatality ratio for DHF averages about 5% worldwide, but can be kept below 1% with proper clinical management. Epidemics caused by all four virus serotypes have become progressively more frequent and larger in the past 25 years. As of 2004, dengue fever is endemic in most tropical countries of the South Pacific, Asia, the Caribbean, the Americas, and Africa (see Maps 4-1 and 4-2). Additionally, most tropical urban centers in these regions have multiple dengue virus serotypes co-circulating (hyperendemicity), which increases dengue transmission and the risk of DHF. Future dengue incidence in specific locales cannot be predicted accurately, but a high level of dengue transmission is anticipated in all tropical areas of the world for the indefinite future. The incidence of the severe disease, DHF, has increased dramatically in Southeast Asia, the South Pacific, and the American tropics in the past 25 years, with major epidemics occurring in many countries every 3-5 years. The first major epidemic in the Americas occurred in Cuba in 1981, and a second major epidemic of DHF occurred in Venezuela in 1989-1990. Since then, outbreaks, sporadic cases, or both, of confirmed DHF have occurred in most tropical American countries. After an absence of 35 years, several autochthonous cases of dengue fever occurred in southern Texas in 1980, 1986, 1995, 1997, 1998 and 1999, associated with imported cases and epidemic dengue in adjacent states in Mexico. After an absence of 56 years, a limited outbreak of dengue fever occurred in Hawaii in 2001, associated with imported cases and epidemic dengue in the South Pacific.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I first heard of DEET when I started travelling to China. Apparently, mosquitoes can be quite pesty for us travellers. One tip that someone gave me was to spray my clothes with bug spray (which must have DEET) before I got dressed. If is a particuarily a buggy season where you are travelling, you could even lightly spray the room. It's a little smelly, but better than the alternative - Dengue Fever :)

Linda said...

Thank you so much for the information about spraying the room too!