MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Sixth death of dengue disease in Argentina

A sixth person has died of the mosquito transmitted dengue disease in Argentina. The Bolivian born victim died in the northern province of Salta of “dengue-shock syndrome”, which is a consequence of the more lethal form of the disease haemorrhagic dengue, reported the local daily “El Tribuno”.

The 33 year old man whose name was not released had reported at a clinic next to the Bolivian border and his case had been described as “suspicious”. As happens in these cases a blood sample was taken to have it analyzed in Buenos Aires.

Meantime this week Argentine health authorities admitted that the number of cases of dengue fever in Buenos Aires rose to 302 out of a total 23,470 in the country.

Most people with dengue in Buenos Aires got sick after travelling to the north, the part of Argentina hardest hit by the disease, which in the past few months had its worst outbreak in the nation’s history.

“The increase in cases was expected in the city as a consequence of tourist travel during the long (holiday) weekends” the director of the Pasteur Institute of Buenos Aires, Oscar Lencinas, told the media.

Also expected is the confirmation of another 1,080 suspected cases that are being analyzed at the Pergamino medical centre outside the Argentine capital.

The northern provinces of Salta, Chaco and Catamarca are the most affected by the disease transmitted by the Aedes aegypti mosquito.

Independent organizations warn that the number of dengue patients in the country is actually double the 23,470 officially reported.

“Argentina is en route to becoming a dengue-endemic country — that much is clear,” said Hector Coto, executive director of the Healthy World Foundation. Although the outbreak began and has remained strongest in the semi-tropical north of the country, every province in the nation has now seen suspected infections.

Some of the reported illnesses, especially those in the frigid Patagonian states, are believed to have been contracted when people traveled to dengue-endemic regions. But health officials believe the vast majority of cases, including some of those in temperate Buenos Aires, came from mosquitoe right in peoples’ backyards.

This is a rude awakening for a country that had eradicated the dengue-carrying mosquito from its territory decades ago. But after 81 years without dengue, a few cases were imported from neighboring countries in 1997. A major domestic outbreak occurred the following year, and in the past decade there have been five more outbreaks infecting almost 3,000 people.

In neighbouring Bolivia and Paraguay and in the great parts of Brazil the disease in endemic. This rainy summer in the tropical lowlands of Bolivia the disease has been particularly severe with at least 60.000 cases reported, when a collapsed health system ceased to reveal numbers.

In the summer of 2008 Paraguay lived a similar scenario with near-panic situations in the capital Asunción.

However Argentina seems not to have fully adjusted to the new health reality. Groups like the Argentine chapter of the international NGO Doctors of the World have accused the national and provincial governments of negligence in treating the disease, and of denying the extent of the problem.

Indeed, the congressional debate over whether to declare a health emergency in the worst-affected areas was suddenly silenced last month when Senate Majority Leader Miguel Pichetto declared, “We shall not place Argentina in the red zone of the world,” citing concerns about hurting tourism in the country.