Dengue claims 17 more lives in 24 hrs

Staff Reporter :
Dengue claimed more 17 lives in 24 hours till Thursday morning, raising the fatalities from the mosquito-borne disease in Bangladesh to 1,449 this year.

During the period, 1,734 more patients were hospitalised with the viral fever, according to the DGHS.

A total of 6,360 dengue patients, including 1,649 in the capital, are now receiving treatment at hospitals across the country.

So far, the DGHS has recorded 2,87,239 dengue cases and 2, 79,430 recoveries this year.

The data also said that September has so far been the deadliest month for the dengue outbreak this year with 396 fatalities and 79,598 cases.

“Dengue positive cases have increased ten times and death three times between mid-September, 2022 and mid-September, 2023,” Professor Dr. Md Golam Sharower, Head, Department of Entomology, National Institute of Preventive and Social Medicine (NIPSOM) told a seminar.

While presenting the keynote paper, Sharower explained that with global warming, our country’s environmental factors such as temperature, relative humidity and rainfall are increasing, all of which play a key role in increasing the reproductive capacity of the Aedes mosquito.

He said there is unplanned urbanization, industrialization and ancillary activities such as construction of multi-storied buildings blocking waterways, dumping old cars and turning cities into mosquito sanctuaries.

The morphological, biological and behavioral changes that have occurred in Aedes mosquitoes as a result of all our unknown activities in mosquito breeding are highly favorable for Aedes mosquitoes to transmit dengue virus, he elaborated.

According to the DGHS, Bangladesh reported 1,01,354 dengue cases, the second highest since dengue cases were detected in 2000, in 2019, 1,405 cases in 2020, 28,429 cases in 2021 and 62,382 cases in 2022.

It also added that Bangladesh recorded 179 dengue related deaths in 2019, seven deaths in 2020, 105 deaths in 2021 and 281 deaths, the second highest deaths, in 2022.

According to the health experts, the vector-borne disease hit Dhaka city in 2000 subsequently the dengue positive cases were detected in Dhaka city only. But the dengue disease is changing its nature and it is gradually spreading across the country, they said, adding, “All 64 districts of the country have witnessed positive dengue cases.”