P.R. gov't declares emergency after increase in dengue deaths

San Juan, Agency
Puerto Rican authorities declared a public health emergency after the confirmation of 10 new deaths from dengue fever, which could cause record levels of fatalities in 2010 if the current trend is maintained.

Chief epidemiologist Carmen de la Seda said Tuesday that the emergency declaration will immediately result in doctors with certain specialties receiving a course in detection and treatment of the disease.

In addition, an awareness campaign is under way among the Puerto Rican population to prevent the spread of the disease, she said.

"The problem is serious," De la Seda said, noting that an average of 450 new cases of dengue are being registered every week, a result - she added - of the start of the "peak" seasonal period for the disease on the Caribbean island.

She said that the "unprecedented rains" that have been falling for months across Puerto Rico have caused an increase in the number of deaths compared to past years, but she rejected the idea that there was any out-of-control epidemic.

De la Seda urged the public to take preventive measures and, above all, to control the breeding sites of mosquitoes, the true foci of contagion of the disease, which so far this year has taken the lives of at least 18 people here.

The Health Department recently acquired 10 fumigation machines which have been placed at the disposal of the island's municipalities that cannot buy such machinery for themselves, the chief epidemiologist said.

De la Seda said that dengue is an endemic disease in Puerto Rico and the fact that now more deaths have been confirmed could be due, in turn, to the fact that previously deaths - many of which are suspected to have been caused by the disease - were not analyzed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.

Health Secretary Lorenzo Gonzalez said that to the 18 confirmed dengue deaths so far in 2010 must be added 14 more suspected fatalities, the circumstances of which are presently being examined.

If those deaths are found to have been due to dengue, that would mean that 32 people have died from the disease so far this year, which would far outpace the 19 deaths registered in 1998, the year that holds the record for such fatalities in recent decades.

Suspected cases of dengue so far this year have totaled 12,112.

Puerto Rican health authorities officially declared that a dengue epidemic existed on the Caribbean island at the beginning of March, after for two consecutive weeks the numerical threshold established for newly registered cases of the disease was exceeded.

The combination of high temperatures and unusually heavy rains so far this year has favored the massive reproduction of the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which transmits the disease.