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Sunday, August 10, 2025

PAHO warns of increased risk of dengue outbreaks

by

179 days ago
20250211

The Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (PA­HO) has is­sued an epi­demi­o­log­i­cal alert re­gard­ing the in­creased risk of dengue out­breaks in the Amer­i­c­as, in­clud­ing the Caribbean, at­trib­uted to the grow­ing cir­cu­la­tion of the DENV-3 serotype in sev­er­al coun­tries in the re­gion.

PA­HO said it is urg­ing coun­tries to strength­en their sur­veil­lance, ear­ly di­ag­no­sis, and clin­i­cal man­age­ment to ad­dress po­ten­tial in­creas­es in dengue cas­es.

Dengue, trans­mit­ted by the Aedes ae­gyp­ti mos­qui­to, has four serotypes: DENV-1, DENV-2, DENV-3, and DENV-4. Im­mu­ni­ty against one serotype on­ly pro­vides life­long pro­tec­tion against that spe­cif­ic serotype, mean­ing that sub­se­quent in­fec­tions with oth­er serotypes can in­crease the risk of se­vere forms of the dis­ease.

PA­HO said the ap­pear­ance or rise of a serotype that was not pre­vi­ous­ly pre­dom­i­nant in a re­gion can lead to a surge in cas­es due to greater pop­u­la­tion sus­cep­ti­bil­i­ty.

Ac­cord­ing to PA­HO, the DENV-3 serotype has been iden­ti­fied in sev­er­al coun­tries across the Amer­i­c­as, par­tic­u­lar­ly among chil­dren, and it has al­so been de­tect­ed in oth­er coun­tries in Cen­tral Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean.

It said that this serotype has been linked to se­vere forms of the dis­ease, even in pri­ma­ry in­fec­tions, rais­ing con­cerns about its po­ten­tial im­pact on pub­lic health.

“The re-emer­gence of DENV-3, af­ter a pro­longed ab­sence in cer­tain ar­eas of the re­gion, in­creas­es the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty of pop­u­la­tions that have not been pre­vi­ous­ly ex­posed to this serotype,” PA­HO added.

It said that in 2024, the Amer­i­c­as re­gion re­port­ed over 13 mil­lion cas­es of dengue, of which 22,684 were clas­si­fied as se­vere and 8,186 re­sult­ed in deaths.

In the ear­ly weeks of this year, 23 coun­tries and ter­ri­to­ries in the re­gion re­port­ed a to­tal of 238,659 cas­es and of these cas­es, 263 were se­vere, and 23 peo­ple died as a re­sult of the dis­ease.

PA­HO rec­om­mends that coun­tries strength­en vec­tor con­trol mea­sures, en­hance di­ag­nos­tic ca­pac­i­ty with­in health­care sys­tems, and en­sure ear­ly and ad­e­quate treat­ment for pa­tients to pre­vent se­vere com­pli­ca­tions. Pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion cam­paigns to re­duce ex­po­sure to mos­qui­to vec­tors and elim­i­nate breed­ing grounds are al­so es­sen­tial.

It said re­gard­ing vac­ci­na­tion, ac­cord­ing to the ev­i­dence gen­er­at­ed by the man­u­fac­tur­er and pub­lished in the main phase 3 study, the TAK-003 dengue vac­cine, used in some coun­tries in the re­gion, has shown low­er pro­tec­tion against DENV-3, es­pe­cial­ly in chil­dren with­out a his­to­ry of in­fec­tion.

“This high­lights the need to en­sure safe vac­ci­na­tion and main­tain con­tin­u­ous mon­i­tor­ing of ad­verse events po­ten­tial­ly at­trib­ut­able to the vac­ci­na­tion,”  said PA­HO, which adds it is close­ly mon­i­tor­ing the evo­lu­tion of DENV-3 cir­cu­la­tion along with the oth­er serotypes, and will con­tin­ue sup­port­ing coun­tries in im­ple­ment­ing ef­fec­tive con­trol and re­sponse mea­sures to po­ten­tial out­breaks.

“It is crit­i­cal that health­care sys­tems are pre­pared to man­age the ex­pect­ed in­crease in cas­es and mit­i­gate the risk of se­vere com­pli­ca­tions as­so­ci­at­ed with this dis­ease,” it added.

WASH­ING­TON, Feb 11, CMC

CMC/gh/ir/2025.


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