With sanitary brigades that fumigate house to house, Peru seeks to eradicate the mosquito that transmits dengue in an attempt to control an outbreak of this endemic disease that has left 79 dead and 73,159 infections so far this year, the highest number since 2017.
With sanitary brigades that fumigate house to house, Peru seeks to eradicate the mosquito that transmits dengue in an attempt to control an outbreak of this endemic disease that has left 79 dead and 73,159 infections so far this year, the highest number since 2017.
From early hours, thousands of residents of the San Juan de Lurigancho district, the most populous in Lima with 1.5 million inhabitants, forcibly abandoned their homes to allow the fumigation.
“We are presenting an outbreak of dengue at the national level,” he assured the AFP the general director of Salud Lima Centro, Martín Gutiérrez.
“We are looking for the larva (of the dengue-transmitting mosquito) and fumigating house to house to combat the outbreak,” he added.
According to the Peruvian Ministry of Health, so far this year, 73,159 cases have been reported, 79 deaths and 671 hospitalized.
The Minister of Health, Rosa Gutiérrez, assured that the figure is the highest since 2017, when there were 68,290 thousand cases and 89 deaths after the El Niño climate phenomenon.
“This outbreak is related to a weather factor,” stressed the minister.
Departments of northern Peru and the Amazon, where there were heavy rains between February and April, are the most affected by the disease, which is transmitted by the Aedes aegypti mosquito.
In Piura, on the border with Ecuador, 20,315 cases and 12 deaths were reported, and in Lambayeque 5,053 cases and 11 deaths. Another affected region is Ica (south) with 6,498 cases and 19 deaths.
Powerful insecticide in Peru
The brigadistas use a powerful insecticide based on organic phosphates known as malathion, according to the health authorities.
“It has never been seen like this so strong that almost every neighborhood (in Lima) is spreading the disease,” Erika Toribio, 41, told AFP, who waited on the street carrying her baby while her home was fumigated.
“Dengue is killing a lot of people. First it was the covid, we were saved from the covid, now dengue comes,” said 26-year-old shopkeeper Leslie Llontop.
The fumigation also aroused criticism among some doctors. “No dengue epidemic has been controlled with fumigation. In this phase, a hospital response is needed and deaths are avoided, ”alert doctor Juan Celis, president of the Peruvian Society for Infectious and Tropical Diseases, from his Twitter account.
Dengue is an endemic disease in tropical areas that causes high fevers, headaches, nausea, vomiting, muscle pain and, in the most severe cases, bleeding that can cause death.
“The situation we are facing is very serious. The increase in cases began at the end of last year and is increasing violently,” former Health Minister Víctor Zamora told RPP radio.
It was detected in Peru for the first time in 1984, and has since become an endemic disease.
The World Health Organization (WHO) warned in April that dengue fever and other diseases caused by mosquito-borne viruses are spreading much further and further under the influence of climate change.
According to the WHO, dengue is endemic in 100 countries, but poses a threat to another 29.
The number of cases has increased exponentially in recent years, from half a million in 2000 to 5.2 million in 2019.
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