The head of the Tropical Diseases Unit of the World Health Organization (WHO) Raman Velayudkhan said at a UN briefing in Geneva about the terrible disease that Russian tourists risk bringing en masse from tropical countries. It's about dengue fever. According to his statement, the WHO recorded an eightfold increase in the number of cases of dengue fever between 2000 and 2022. At the same time, some countries where dengue is common provide incomplete statistics. Half of the world's population is at risk of getting dengue, according to the WHO. At the same time, an imported case – surprisingly, from Egypt – was first recorded in Russia.
“The number of cases has risen from 500,000 to 4.2 million. But the actual number could be much higher, as the organization has become increasingly more accurate in recent years. About half of the world's population is at risk of dengue, and dengue affects approximately 129 countries,” said Mr. Velayudhan, adding that there are approximately 100 million to 400 million cases of the disease each year. However, he added that 80% of cases are asymptomatic. In addition, the disease is not transmitted from person to person, the carriers of the disease are “specific” tropical mosquitoes. However, the only vaccine currently on the market is the Sanofi Pasteur vaccine, and “the effectiveness of the vaccine against different variants of dengue fever is a problem.” The WHO also added that the death rate from dengue fever ranges from 40,000 to 70,000 per year.
It is important in such cases to be able to read between the lines: given that dengue fever is generally not a fatal disease, the main threat to people in general and to tourism in particular is the possible restrictions and closures of borders, the mechanism of which was tested during the coronavirus…
At the same time, the Russian Rospotrebnadzor also strengthened control over flights from foreign countries. Egypt came under attack – due to the fact that an eight-year-old Russian who returned from a vacation in Egyptian Sharm el-Sheikh with a cold, tour operators working with Egypt seem to have to warn their customers about the danger of infection
True, the insurers noted that they had not received a single complaint in connection with dengue disease, and the travel agent learned about the diagnosis of dengue in a child who returned from Egypt by chance from a conversation and with his parents, who are healthy. Most likely, experts add, the child did not catch the fever in Sharm – according to reports, the family also traveled along the Nile and visited Cairo. The Egyptian Ministry of Health, in turn, notes that sterilization of reservoirs has begun in the Nile River Valley in connection with the spread of mosquitoes that carry dengue. In the province of Qena, through which everyone visiting Luxor and Aswan passes, 60 cases of the disease have recently been recorded.
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