“I was afraid of losing my babies,” says Josselyn Caqui from her hospital bed in Lima after contracting dengue, a viral disease which, fueled by the El Niño climatic phenomenon, is spreading like never before in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Fifteen weeks pregnant with twins, the 32-year-old young woman has been hospitalized for five days at the Sergio Bernales hospital in the Peruvian capital, where dozens of infected patients are treated every day.
“I don’t know how I got infected. It’s horrible,” she confided to AFP under a large tulle curtain protecting her from new bites from mosquitoes (aedes aegypti), responsible for transmitting the virus. virus.
The disease, which causes high fever with in rare cases progressing to a more serious form, is not transmitted from man to man, but in pregnant women, there is a risk for the child.
Widespread in hot countries, the virus occurs mainly in urban and semi-urban areas and causes 100 to 400 million infections per year, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
In late March, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) warned that Latin America and the Caribbean could expect the worst dengue season on record.
In less than three months since the start of the year, health authorities in the region have recorded more than 3.5 million cases and a thousand deaths from the virus.
According to the Peruvian Ministry of Health, since the beginning of the year 147 deaths have been caused by dengue and more than 155,000 cases have been reported in the country. These figures far exceed the 39 deaths and 34,000 cases reported during the same period in 2023.
The seriousness of the situation led the government to declare a health emergency in 20 of the country’s 25 regions in February.
“Fear for my life”
The Sergio Bernales Hospital has opened a service adapted to infected people. Between January and April, it treated 2,200 people, a figure increasing by more than 200% compared to the same period in 2023.
“I was afraid for my life, but now I am a little more stable,” says Alonso Vergaray, an 18-year-old student, who suffered from a throat hemorrhage due to the virus.
“I suddenly felt bad, I had no appetite or strength,” says Luis Camacho, a 60-year-old mason, also hospitalized.
Dengue particularly hits the capital of 10 million inhabitants. “We are on an upward curve in Lima due to the density of the population,” Health Minister César Vasquez recently stressed to the newspaper El Comercio.
High temperatures caused by the El Niño phenomenon between mid-2023 and March 2024 favored the spread of the virus. “This climate is conducive to the reproduction of the (mosquito) Aedes aegypti,” explains infectious disease specialist Diamantina Moreno.
The increase in the number of infections is seen in all countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, but particularly in Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina, three countries which represent 92% of all cases and 87% of deaths. , according to the WHO.
In Brazil, the number of cases in the first five weeks of the year increased fivefold compared to the same period in 2023. The country launched a free vaccination campaign against dengue in February, following the explosion of cases.
In Argentina, 129 deaths from the disease were recorded in the first quarter of 2024, compared to 13 in the first three months of the previous year.
As a result, the country is suffering from a shortage of repellent which has led to hysteria with stampedes in supermarkets and crazy prices on the internet to obtain it.
