Dengue outbreak in Brazil prompting emergency health measures

The year 2024 started with a severe health crisis for Brazil as the country's hot, rainy season led to a massive dengue outbreak. According to health officials, Brazil has reported 3,64,855 cases of dengue infections and 40 deaths in the first 5 weeks of this year. This is equivalent to 4 times the cases reported in the same period last year. Responding to the outbreak, 3 Brazilian states have declared emergencies, including the second most populous state Minas Gerais. Army troops have been deployed in the capital, Brasilia, to help track breeding spots of the Aedes aegypti mosquito and to set up field hospitals. And with the Rio de Janeiro carnival, a mega event attended by 1,00,000 people per day, set to begin on February 14, Brazil is highly volatile at the moment. The sudden surge in dengue numbers for Brazil during the southern hemisphere summer can be attributed to the rising temperatures and the El Nino weather pattern in the Pacific. The dengue crisis is not just limited to Brazil. In recent years, the disease has become endemic in other countries in South America, as well as Africa, and South Asia.
Globally, about 400 million people are infected with dengue every year, leading to about 40,000 deaths.* As with most infectious diseases, the number of cases tends to rise and fall over the years as epidemics come and go. But recent times have seen a steady rise of dengue outbreaks around the world which are larger and less predictable.
All mosquitoes need water to breed. It is usually the lack of these breeding sites that caps the number of mosquitoes. But a change in climate and rain patterns have made the situation unpredictable. For example, the early arrival of rains coupled with unusually high temperatures and humidity led to a surge in Dengue infections in Bangladesh last year. Bangladesh also recorded the highest number of deaths due to dengue in 2023, fuelled by climate change. Furthermore, Aedes aegypti, which is essentially a tropical mosquito, is also a very adaptable insect. In recent years, these mosquitoes have expanded their range out of the tropics into parts of Europe, the US, and Africa where they have previously been absent.
*According to WHO reports
The solution is likely to be an affordable and effective vaccine as well as the population control of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes. The WHO has recently recommended the Qdenga vaccine for children living in areas where the infection is a major public health problem. During the ongoing crisis, Brazil has bought 5.2 million doses of the dengue vaccine Qdenga. Officials also stated recently that Brasilia will start vaccinating children aged 10-14 with Qdenga. As the world gets increasingly warmer and wetter, mosquito-related disease outbreaks are predicted to rise and spread. And as with most other life-threatening communicable diseases, it is once again the poorest communities in the global tropics that will have to bear the brunt of this.