Honduras declares state of health emergency as Central America enters peak dengue season

CNN
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Honduras declared a state of national health emergency after reporting an increase in hospitalizations and deaths from dengue fever, the Health Ministry announced Friday.

The government has asked health officials to take all necessary measures, including implementing prevention and control measures and identifying funds to manage the outbreak.

The Honduran Ministry of Health reported 23,037 suspected cases of dengue fever in the first 20 weeks of the year. This is one of the highest totals in the Americas, according to data collected by the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO).

The entire region has already reported more than 8.65 million cases in the first five months of 2024, almost twice as many as the more than 4.5 million cases reported in the entire 2023, which was a record at the time.

The Southern Cone of the Americas accounted for most cases in the first half of 2024, with Brazil alone recording 7.2 million. But now the southern region is seeing a significant decrease in infections, while Central America and the Caribbean are beginning to enter their peak dengue season, according to PAHO.

“Honduras has entered the epidemic zone due to the increase in cases in all departments of the country, as well as the number of patients admitted to all hospitals in the country due to this disease,” the Honduran ministry said on Friday. of Health.

This year, Honduras reported the second-highest number of cases in the Central American-Mexico Isthmus subregion, behind Mexico, which had more than 69,000.

PAHO and the World Health Organization recommend that countries in these areas “adopt the necessary measures to prepare the response to the increase in dengue fever, including the organization of health services to ensure adequate clinical load, prevention of complications and avoiding saturation of specialized care services. .”

Dengue is a mosquito-borne virus that is spread primarily by the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which is also known to carry several other viruses, such as yellow fever, chikungunya and Zika, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention diseases (CDC). It causes flu-like symptoms and can lead to death in extreme cases.