2023-09-10 10:52:00
Rise in cases, increasing hospitalizations: the dengue epidemic continues to progress in the Antilles, where health authorities are monitoring profiles at risk of serious forms, in particular patients with sickle cell anemia, a disease very widespread in black populations.
Between August 28 and September 3, the French Public Health agency recorded 770 cases clinically suggestive of dengue in Martinique and 600 in Guadeloupe. To a much lesser extent, Saint-Martin and Saint-Barthélemy are also affected, with the first cases confirmed on these two islands in the north of the West Indies.
The mosquito, the main vector
Since mid-August, Guadeloupe and Martinique have been in an epidemic phase for this tropical disease, which is transmitted mainly by mosquito bites and can manifest itself with high fevers, headaches, body aches, nausea and skin rashes.
“What is particular during this epidemic is that there are very frequently digestive signs which are associated with pain: nausea, loss of appetite, stomach pain and diarrhea,” indicated on Radio Caraibes International Professor André Cabié, head of the infectious and tropical diseases department at the University Hospital Center (CHU) of Martinique.
150 emergency visits per day at Martinique University Hospital
Health professionals particularly monitor patients with sickle cell disease, a genetic disease very common in black populations in the West Indies, which affects the hemoglobin of red blood cells. “We know that these people are very at risk of developing serious illnesses,” explained Professor Cabié. “It is really important, as soon as symptoms begin, to consult a doctor very quickly to start treatment as soon as possible,” he added.
In Guadeloupe, eight people were hospitalized between August 31 and September 3, and nine in Martinique, where emergency doctors and Samu asked the population to turn to community medicine to relieve emergency room congestion, according to Yannick Brouste, emergency manager at Martinique University Hospital. “Usually we are on 120 passages per day, here we are more on 150 with peaks at 180, which is rather exceptional,” he declared.
No treatment yet
“No treatment exists for dengue,” Mathilde Melin, deputy head of the Antilles unit of Public Health France, told AFP. “Only protection against mosquitoes is effective.” The health authorities are doubling down on communication messages around the right actions to adopt: eliminating, after each rain, the stagnant water points in which mosquito larvae develop, using repellents, wearing long clothing, etc.
The use of insecticides is less effective in combating the proliferation of mosquitoes, according to Anubis Vega-Rua, head of the vector control studies laboratory at the Institut Pasteur in Guadeloupe, because the mosquito “has developed resistance important to insecticides. The use of different molecules since the 1950s, she explains, has eliminated all insects sensitive to these products, leaving only those who were resistant to them alive.
Storage of water barrels problematic
“Chemical control has a limit there,” notes Anubis Vega-Rua, who with other scientists is considering “alternative methods” that are less harmful to biodiversity and the environment, such as the sterilization of mosquitoes or the inoculation of bacteria. “Vector control must also be total in the territory,” notes the scientist, referring to the water problems which push residents to store barrels where mosquitoes can reproduce.
It also calls for taking the subject into account in town planning projects. If, for the moment, only one species of mosquito vector of dengue, the aedes aegypti, is rampant in the French West Indies, “it is only a matter of time” before the so-called “tiger” mosquito, the aedes albopictus, already present in Europe, does not arrive on the shores of Guadeloupe and Martinique.
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