The World Health Organisation (WHO) warned on Friday that half of the world’s population is at danger of catching the mosquito-borne dengue virus.
According to Raman Velayudhan, WHO’s section leader for tropical diseases, WHO documented an eightfold rise in dengue cases between 2000 and 2022, rising from 500,000 to 4.2 million.
Velayudhan emphasised that the true amount might be considerably higher because the organisation has received more and more accurate statistics in recent years.
“About half of the world’s population is at risk of dengue, and dengue affects approximately 129 countries,” he added, saying that 100 to 400 million cases are recorded each year.
Dengue fever is a dangerous sickness that is most usually transmitted through mosquito bites from one person to the next, according to him.
He went on to say that 80% of the instances are asymptomatic.
According to him, the only vaccination now on the market is a Sanofi Pasteur vaccine.
This vaccine has been approved for use in approximately 20 countries.
The vaccine only protects patients who have already been infected with dengue once and requires three doses.
According to the expert, the vaccine’s efficiency against the four dengue virus variants (1, 2, 3, and 4) is approximately 65% on average.
According to Velayudhan, the vaccine is effective against dengue 1 and dengue 3. While it is less effective against dengue 2, it is around 50% effective against dengue 4.
He described the vaccine’s variable efficiency against different strains of dengue as a difficulty.
According to estimates, dengue deaths vary between 40,000 and 70,000 per year, with many nations failing to disclose them.
“The case fatality rate is less than 1% in the majority of countries, and we hope to reduce it even further,” he added.