Dengue Dispersing in New Delhi

I chose to write about an article from the New York Times titled “As Dengue Fever Sweeps India, a Slow Response Stirs Experts’ Fears”. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/07/world/asia/alarm-over-indias-dengue-fever-epidemic.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0&ref=epidemics

This article talks about the recent worry of the dengue fever epidemic in India. It is starting to spread rapidly through India, especially New Delhi, and the Indian government is not doing much to help with this epidemic. Dengue fever is not life threatening, only in some cases. Dengue Fever is passed by mosquitoes. When someone catches the fever most of the time there is only mild fatigue, or a small fever. But for some they can get flulike symptoms, high fevers, vomiting, pain behind the eyes, rashes and joint and muscle aches so bad that Dengue is sometimes called “breakbone fever.” There are so many cases throughout India that the government doesn’t chose to count them, only make an estimate. A chief of infectious diseases, Dr. Timothy Endy states that in India, “anybody over the age of 20 in India has been infected with dengue”. Many people say that if you haven’t gotten it yet, you should expect it.1 One in six tourists will also return from New Delhi with this fever. The biggest issue with India not properly counting the amount infected is that they cant offer proper help if they don’t have an accurate number of those who need it. The health care is not prepared if this number suddenly increases more, nor is the facilities to help. Recent vaccines have failed and it doesn’t look like there is one coming in the near future. In New Delhi especially, with many areas with standing water, the disease is widespread. Hospitals are described as “overrun and feverish patients are sharing beds and languishing in hallways.” Through October only 30,002 people have been reported to have dengue fever, yet the real number is probably in the millions. A tropical disease expert, Dr. Scott Halstead estimated 37 million dengue infections per year in India with only 227,500 hospitalizations. With these massive amounts of cases going unreported, the disease is going to keep spreading, and can easily spread around the worlds.

I think India should start accurately counting the number of cases of dengue fever so they can try to at least slow down this constantly increasing epidemic.  Even without a vaccine, I think this epidemic can be slowed down and its numbers decreased. Hopefully, the people in India can receive the treatment they need to stop this epidemic.