Dengue cases surpass 80,000 mark, deaths rise to 373

Staff Reporter :
Bangladesh grapples with an unprecedented outbreak of dengue with the number of cases reported by hospitals reaching 80,074 since January this year and 2,046 new cases recorded in the latest daily count.

It is likely to register record numbers of dengue cases this year, along with record-breaking death tolls. The year 2019 witnessed the most cases on record with 101,350 cases.

The death toll from the mosquito-borne disease has risen to 373 with nine more fatalities in 24 hours till Friday morning, the Directorate General of Health Services said. However, the previous record of 281 deaths reported in 2022.

Meanwhile, the hospitals in Dhaka remained overwhelmed with the surge of patients and struggled to make more space as the number of dengue patients continued to rise.

As many as 1,193 new cases have been detected outside Dhaka, but six of the deaths occurred in the capital.

On Friday morning, 9,675 dengue patients were in hospital care around the country, and 5,254 of them were outside Dhaka.

The dengue outbreak has been worse in 2023 than in previous years.

Last year, hospitals reported 62,382 patients taking medical care, and the death toll stood at 281, the previous highest since record-keeping began for dengue hospitalisations in the 1960s.

In 2019, Bangladesh witnessed over 100,000 dengue hospitalisations, a record number of cases in a single year. The official death toll that year was recorded at 179.

A pre-monsoon government-funded survey of Dhaka city has uncovered an alarming surge of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, known carriers of the dengue virus, fuelling the worst spread of the disease over the past five years.

Most of the deaths caused by dengue occurred due to hemorrhagic fever and shock syndrome, which health experts associated with some new variants of the deadly virus, previously undetected in Bangladesh.

Regarding the record outbreak, Jahangirnagar University Professor of Entomology Kabirul Bashar said, ” The virus had already spread within the community therefore it was also being transmitted.

This is the reason why we are seeing such a high number of dengue cases in July.

This will probably increase further in August and September.”