Update on the Dengue Fever Mini-Epidemic
The peak of the dengue fever epidemic has been reached. Since the beginning of the year, 112 people on St. Barth have caught dengue fever, with 46 of those cases occurring between mid-July and mid-August. However, the number of reported cases during the last three weeks has decreased. The island has been sprayed rigorously with malathion in an attempt to kill the virus-carrying mosquitoes. But, because the mosquito Aedes Aegypti is still present and each rainfall increases its chances of multiplication, measures to curtail its proliferation should still be taken.
I have been visiting St. Barths with some regularity since 1973, and in the last decade or so, become very interested in the dengue situation, finding it difficult to get reliable data.The Sept. 15 post asserting that the outbreak in 2008 had "peaked" in mid August with 112 cases since Jan of 2008 is now shown to be optimistic, since 42 new cases have been reported in the second week of this January, and 374 cases since October. This causes me to be very interested in the source of the post above. Where did information on the use of malathion come from, as well as the number of 112 cases from Jan 1 to Sept. 15? Since any visitor to St. Barths who gets the disease within a few days of departure may not show symptoms while on the island, it seems likely that the reported number is substantially lower than the real number.
Posted by: raymond auger at February 3, 2009 2:00 PM