Staff Reporter :
Two more people died from dengue, and 53 people were hospitalised with the viral infection in the 24 hours to Sunday morning as cases are creeping up again in Bangladesh.
All the deceased were from Cox’s Bazar. Thirty-five new patients were admitted to the hospitals of Dhaka and 18 outside it, according to the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS).
Two hundred and twenty-two dengue patients, including 170 in the capital, are now receiving treatment at hospitals across the country.
This year, the DGHS has recorded 1,723 dengue cases and 1,498 recoveries so far. Up to now, the directorate has reported three deaths from the mosquito-borne viral disease. On June 21, the DGHS reported the first death of the season from dengue. Dengue – a leading cause of serious illness and death in some Asian and Latin American countries – was first reported in Bangladesh in 2000 and claimed 93 lives. In three years, the fatality number almost fell to zero.
However, 105 dengue patients, including 95 in Dhaka division, died in 2021.
About 4 billion people, almost half of the world’s population, live in areas with a risk of dengue, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Each year, up to 400 million people get infected with dengue while approximately 100 million get sick from infection, and 40,000 die from severe dengue, it says.
“There is no specific treatment for dengue or severe dengue. Early detection of disease progression associated with severe dengue, and access to proper medical care lowers fatality rates of severe dengue to below 1 percent,” according to the World Health Organization.
