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The fight against dengue fever: Light at the end of the tunnel?
The search for a dengue vaccine continued and some encouraging new developments are a cause for measured optimism.
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Dengue fever patients undergo treatment on March 8, 2024, at the Sunan Kudus Islamic Hospital in Kudus, Central Java. (Antara/Yusuf Nugroho)
D
engue fever remains a major global public health threat with an estimated 390 million dengue infections occurring worldwide resulting in up to 36,000 deaths annually. Dengue is now endemic in over 100 countries, and as many as 3.6 billion people, or 40 percent of the world's population, live in dengue-endemic areas mostly in developing countries and, therefore, are at risk of infection and disease.
The year 2019 marked an unprecedented peak in dengue incidence with reported cases spreading across 129 countries. Following a slight decline in reported cases in 2020-2022 because of the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused lower reporting rates, a global upsurge in dengue cases was observed in 2023, characterized by a significant increase in the number, scale and simultaneous occurrence of multiple outbreaks that spread into regions previously unaffected.
While Southeast Asia previously accounted for 70 percent of global dengue cases, 80 percent of cases were reported in the Americas last year, with Brazil registering close to 3 million cases out of 5 million cases globally.
In Southeast Asia, the countries with the highest burdens include Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia and the Philippines.
Indonesia has not been spared and recorded more than 270,000 cases of dengue in 2023, almost four times the 74,000 cases reported in 2017. The total number of dengue cases in Indonesia until February 2024 was 15,977, with 124 deaths.
What has driven this surge in cases globally and regionally?
As a consequence of climate change and global warming linked to El Niño in 2023, increasing temperatures, high rainfall and humidity have led to faster breeding and increased numbers of the mosquito vectors of dengue (chiefly Aedes aegypti). Changing distribution of these mosquito vectors has also been observed, especially in previously dengue naïve countries.
