Vox Pop Dengue: I got a fever!

Puerto Rico

Jonathan Kearney and fellow volunteers Stephen and Dan work at the Centro Buen Pastor en Caguas in Puerto Rico.  Jon writes a blog to chronicle his experiences.

Caguas is a 20-25 minute drive south of San Juan into more of a foothills terrain.  Over the past few years, a collective effort called Proyecto Siempre Verde (Project Always Green) developed.  The idea of the project is to make the rain forest more of an ecotourism attraction.  A lot has to happen before any of this is realized, though.  Jonathan is in the midst of developing trails through the forest.  That was when a bout of Dengue cut him down.  Here is his First Person Account of that experience.

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Approximately one week after Dan acquired the flu, which was going strong on the island, I began to come down with something of my own.  Dan had a fever and chills one night and was very weak/tired for the following few days.

A few days after he began to feel better, I was hit by a ton of bricks.  One weekday night, I was watching the latest episode of the TV show House on my computer when I began to feel sick.  I started the episode feeling great, but once I got to the end and packed up my computer, I could barely stand up.

It was amazing how quickly I went from 100 to 0, so to speak.  We had just cooked a big dinner and I had felt completely healthy.  I also got the chills instantly to a degree I never felt before.  My entire body shook, so much so that my teeth began to hurt from all the chattering.

It is generally about 90 degrees in my apartment, even at night.  Despite the heat, I was freezing.  I became very weak and decided to go to bed early.  I notified my roommates of my bizarre illness, took some Tylenol, threw on a sweatshirt, and hopped under the covers.

I woke up at least 5 times during the evening.  Sometimes I woke up with the same extreme chills; sometimes I woke up drenched in sweat.  My entire bed was soaked with sweat.  I felt too sick to move or do anything about it, so I laid there most of the night.  I knew I had a high fever, but we didn’t have a thermometer to check it.

The next day I woke up with 3 more symptoms.  1.) I had absolutely no appetite.  2.) Every part of my body ached.  It was the feeling of squatting in the weight room for the first time in a long time, except everywhere on my body hurt.  This made it hard to even walk.  3.) The worst part by far was the extreme migraine.  I had trouble looking at light.  Then I had trouble moving my eyes around.  If I looked up, my eyes had a sharp, shooting pain.  I continued to feel this way for another 2-3 days.

We finally got a thermometer, but only after I was feeling somewhat better.  My temperature kept floating between 101.5 and 102 degrees.  I couldn’t believe how much better I felt compared to the first few days and yet my temperature was 102.  What was my temperature that first night? 104?

Eventually, I broke into an unbelievable rash all over my body.  Up until this point a doctor and many others decided I had the flu.  The rash, though, is a Dengue Fever hallmark.

I finally got to a doctor who got some blood work done.  I had Dengue Fever.  My white blood cell count had dropped considerably to under 100,000, and other blood work stats were off their usual levels.  On a side note, the doctor noticed I had huge bites of some sort in my groin region.  Before I could even begin thinking about how that could have happened, he told me that the bites were from small ants.  Outstanding!  The hormiguitas are expanding their borders from the kitchen to my bedroom.  Just last week, I woke up to them crawling all over my face.  Good stuff.

So anyway with Dengue, you can’t really do anything about it.  It’s just like a severe flu with more intense symptoms.  You can attempt to control the symptoms, but that may not be too effective as I found out.  Taking Tylenol made my fever drop a degree or two, but it went right back up after an hour.

The major thing you have to be careful about with Dengue is developing the most severe strain.  About a week after symptoms, your white blood cell count drops more than it already has and you are generally in the hospital for a while.

I don’t know all the technical terms; you can look those up medical crowd.  It’s called Hemorrhagic Dengue Fever.  A Puerto Rican friend of mine had this type of Dengue and it sounds absolutely terrible.  After the major symptoms die down, the full recovery takes at least a few weeks.  I lost 15 pounds and felt pretty weak for a long time.  Writing this about a month later, I finally feel like I am back to full strength.  I’m still down a few pounds, but at least I can start to exercise again.

 

Jamaica Ministry of Health launches surveillance manual, conducts surveillance workshop

Jamaica

The Jamaica Ministry of Health, November 03, 2009, launched a surveillance manual as a guide to health care workers involved in the investigation and management of communicable diseases. Developed with the assistance of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), the manual was designed to take care of the shortcomings in existing programmes for the monitoring of outbreaks of infectious diseases and to maximise the use of scarce human, material and financial resources in reporting and investigating cases.

Some of the shortcomings identified among Jamaica’s health care workers were the tardiness and lack of standards in reporting and the less than optimum level of vigour with which cases were routinely investigated.

The launch of the manual in Ocho Rios happened at the same time as the opening of a two-day surveillance workshop in Jamaica.  There, participants discussed issues surrounding the epidemiology and clinical management of vector-borne diseases in their country.  They and all of their colleagues are expected to become intimately familiar with the surveillance manual and to follow the guidelines therein.

PAHO Environmental Health Advisor, Dr. Homero Silva, in acknowledging the re-emergence of Dengue and Malaria, told those present at the launch how great this achievement was for Jamaica.  He said that it “represents a major milestone towards the ultimate goal of bringing all major health problems facing the Jamaican population to a level where they no longer constitute a threat to public health.”

But they were nevertheless admonished that although data collection and reporting should improve, it is even more critical to produce accurate and reliable information that is accessible to their superiors  who must guide the decision-making process along. (Source: Jamaica Information Service)

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Guyana Dengue doubled up this year

Guyana

At 1000 new Dengue cases, Guyana has recorded twice as many cases this year as the last up to the end of September.  It is no consolation that there was a decline in the third quarter for the mosquito population is on the rise again in the coastal areas of the country.  This,  Minister of Health Dr. Leslie Ramsammy, says will lead to an upsurge in Dengue cases in the last quarter of 2009. (Source: Stabroek News)

As anyone who is even remotely familiar with the mode of transmission of Dengue Fever would be aware, the disease is spread by a mosquito called Aedes aegypti.  But what seems to stomp people is that this mosquito survives because we let it.

A. aegypti is a peri-domestic mosquito.  It breeds in clear, unpolluted, unprotected water stored either on purpose or inadvertently in containers left lying around.   For this reason, the only way to control Dengue is for community members to ensure that containers with clean water in them are kept tightly covered at all times to prevent mosquitoes from getting inside and are not so placed around buildings as to be able to receive rainfall.

Mindful of this, Dr. Ramsammy is …”urging all families to re-examine their environment and get rid of all tyres and containers that breed the Aedes aegypti mosquitoes.”

In the case of Guyana, people seem to have great difficulty disposing of their old tyres.  These tyres are black and shaded, making them ideal for mosquitoes to lay their eggs.  Now, the problem is persuade Guyanese to dump these tyres and to search and destroy mosquito breeding grounds by conducting weekly inspections on their premises.  That is the hard part. (Source: caribbeandailynews.com via CMC)

Ramsammy continued, “…no matter how much we do, if you don’t do your part we will not succeed.”  What the Guyana Ministry of Health is doing is distributing literature about mosquito control, conducting premises inspections to the tune of 4, 000 a month in urban areas, applying chemicals to standing water and handing out free supplies to residents for them to apply to their water.

However, there is an inbred resistance among Guyanese to having inspectors come into their yards and homes.  That is the problem.

Unfortunately this may only be the beginning of Guyana’s Dengue woes.  Up to now, not many people have suffered with and died of the complications of Dengue.  Dr. Ramsammy fears that this will no last forever.  So do we. (Source: kaiteurnewsonline)

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The DR/Haiti to X Malaria out

Hispaniola

President Leonel Fernandez of the Dominican Republic and Haitian President Rene Preval are being pitched the idea of eliminating Malaria from within their borders by 2020.

Former President of the United States, Jimmy Carter, visited with Presidents Fernandez and Preval separately in Santo Domingo and Port-au-Prince in early October to try to persuade them to take up the tab for the US$250 million non-profit Carter Center pilot project, which is credited with curbing the spread of Malaria and Lymphatic Filariasis in the two countries’ border towns.  Up to 30,000 Dominicans and Haitians are afflicted with Malaria every year; thousands more are stricken with the disfiguring disease Filariasis.

The Carter Center coordinates the distribution of chemically impregnated bed nets to people, motorbikes for field workers to more easily get around to test and treat patients and microscopes that technicians can use to do their lab work.  However, all of this could come to an end when funding for the Carter Center project runs out in April 2010.

One of the arguments Carter would have made to his opposite numbers was that the 2004 Malaria outbreak in the DR cost the tourist industry in that country just as much in lost revenue as the projected bill for the renewal of the pilot project.  In the case of Haiti, stability in the health sector is crucial to the expansion of the garment, agriculture, energy and tourist industries.

Following his meeting with President Fernandez, Carter told the press assembled in Santo Domingo that Malaria and Filariasis are two diseases that would “…prevent people from working productively… and the fact they still exist is an obstacle to investors coming here for new factories or for tourists coming here to enjoy themselves.”

President Fernandez and President Preval meet again in November to discuss the project further.  Foremost on the agenda must be how to foster full cooperation between Santo Domingo and Port-au-Prince.  The stakes are not confined to the island of Hispaniola that they share, but also for the neighbouring islands of Jamaica and the Bahamas, which have unwittingly accepted malarious persons who are involved in the illegal drugs trade and human trafficking.

Source: Hispaniola leaders aim to eradicate malaria

 

Vox pop Dengue: They’re back…

British Virgin Islands by Freeman Rogers, Editor, The BVI Beacon Well, okay, the mosquitoes never really went away.  But they’ve been particularly awful recently, at least in my Road Town apartment. So I’ve decided to fight back. Freeman Rogers Every morning I get out of bed and grab one of those electric tennis rackets.  Then I sit in my living room and cackle with glee as I take revenge on the insects whose buzzing tormented me throughout night. But that ritual is a little sick.  And, anyway, I’ve swung my electric tennis racket so often I’ve developed tennis elbow. So I thought very hard and developed an ingenious plan. Or so I thought. During the days after I came to the Virgin Islands, I remembered, I seemed to lose several pints of blood to mosquitoes every night.  Then, after a couple weeks, I noticed fewer and fewer bites. When I explained this to other residents, they said, “Oh, yeah, the mosquitoes here like fresh meat. They like to bite new people.” I’ve heard this theory several times since. If it were true, I realised, I could offer my living room couch to tourists for free.  Then, all the mosquitoes would bite them and leave me alone. Since this seemed like a pretty big commitment — you can’t always trust a freeloading tourist — I decided to be sure. ‘Fresh meat’ theory So I called Dr. Dave Chadee, a senior lecturer at the University of the West Indies, who has been studying mosquitoes for more than 27 years. When I asked him about the “fresh meat” theory, he laughed.  The Trinidad-based scientist had another explanation. “I think foreigners that arrive to the islands generally do not take much precaution,” he said. After they’ve been here for a few days, though, they begin to exhibit “learnt behaviour,” such as wearing long pants, applying insect repellent and staying indoors, the scientist said. Dr. Chadee also had another theory to explain the “fresh meat” phenomenon: Over time, people react less to the histamine that mosquitoes inject to keep human blood from clotting. “As the tourists stay on longer and longer, they become less sensitive to the bites,” he said.  “It’s not that you have immunity, it’s that you become less sensitive.” Failed plan In other words, mosquitoes don’t give a hoot about “fresh meat.” My plan to use tourists as mosquito bait was starting to look like a waste of time. But then Dr. Chadee briefly restored my hope.  Some people, he said, seem to naturally attract mosquitoes. Even science doesn’t know why. “Whether it is human odour, whether it is the type of clothing,…or that they’re in the wrong place at the wrong time,” he said. This fact briefly made me reconsider my original plan. But then I wondered how I would advertise my couch: “Free accommodation for someone who is particularly prone to mosquito bites”? I didn’t think I would have many takers. Other plans With my tourist-bait plan out the window, I asked Dr. Chadee about some other wisdom I’d heard. “It is true that eating bananas will keep mosquitoes away?” I said. Again, Dr. Chadee laughed. “I’ve heard people talking about garlic and other things,” he said.  “I don’t know of any foods that can be eaten to really give off the odour that will deter mosquitoes from biting you.  A lot of people have gone and taken Vitamin C, and some have taken garlic and stuff like that, but I don’t think there is much scientific evidence to support the use of that.” Another plan ruined by science. Then Dr. Chadee’s tone became very serious and he started explaining the real danger of mosquitoes: Namely, they can transmit nasty diseases. Here, as most residents know, dengue is the most common threat from the insects.  But Caribbean countries also have to be wary of other diseases they might have forgotten about, the lecturer said. Malaria, for example, was eradicated from most of the region in the 1960s and 1970s, but, since then, many health officials have relaxed their vigilance. As a result, the disease has returned to some countries, including Jamaica. I hung up the phone feeling afraid, with the realisation that my mosquito problem was worse than I had feared. VI fight So I called Minchington Israel, the programme manager for the Virgin Islands’ Vector Control Programme. To my relief, Mr. Israel assured me that his department’s 10 inspectors are on top of the situation.  They spend their time collecting data on where the next mosquito outbreak might occur and trying to pre-empt it. Now, for example, they’re anticipating a problem between Beef Island and Paraquita Bay, and they’re planning to fog the area soon.¹ Currently, most of the programme’s resources are put toward fighting the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which carries dengue, Mr. Israel said.  And, though the VI doesn’t have a history of malaria, officials could institute a similar programme to fight mosquitoes that carry that disease, too, if necessary, he added. But the real soldiers in the mosquito war, according to the programme manager, are you and me. Laying eggs Because Aedes mosquitoes like to lay their eggs in clean water, most of them reproduce in or around homes — in cisterns or in pools that collect around buildings and yards. This means that residents need to clean up any potential breeding areas around their homes.  And, if their cisterns are infested, they can get free guppies from the programme: The tiny fish eat mosquito larvae without fouling drinking water, Mr. Israel said. “There’s no question that only householders can win the battle against Aedes aegypti,” he added, making me feel truly noble in my own quest. After listening carefully to Mr. Israel, I’ve patrolled my apartment for standing water, and I’m considering ordering some free guppies. I feel like a true soldier in the war against mosquitoes. But I’m not sure if that’s enough. So, if you have any friends who happen to be particularly attractive to mosquitoes, please give them my name: I think I know of a great place for them to vacation. ¹The Beef Island to Paraquita Bay areas were fogged ending Thursday, November 05, 2009 with more work still to be done.

Last Updated by Freeman Rogers (Wednesday, 28 October 2009)

 

New NIDs plan afoot to tackle parasitic infectious diseases

There is an initiative afoot in Latin America and the Caribbean to tackle the problem of parasitic infectious diseases such as Dengue Fever. The International Development Bank (IDB) has teamed up with the PAHO (Pan American Health Organization) and the Global Network to, as IDB president Luis Alberto Morena stated, “to put an end to…preventable and controllable diseases” in our region.  The funds for this initiative have come from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

US2.5M of these monies will be turned over to the IDB by the Global Network and the Sabin Vaccine Institute by signed co-financing agreement.  The Sabin Institute will design a special lending mechanism to facilitate the disbursement of sub-grants to deserving beneficiaries at the governmental and non-governmental levels to help them develop integrated plans targeting Dengue, lymphatic filariasis (elephantiasis), plague and other neglected infectious diseases (NIDs).

Source: stabroeknews.com

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‘Dengue Fever is Dangerous’ slideshow v.1.2 is here…

Version 1.1, originally published on May 7, 2008

ALERT! Version 1.2, reflecting the Dengue data for 2008, is here…

 

Slide through Dengue Fever is Dangerous – v.1.1, covering up to 2007. 

 

Or jump ahead to Dengue Fever is Dangerous – v.1.2 for a current perspective, to May 2009.

 

(Brought to you courtesy of the Environmental Health Division, British Virgin Islands)

 

 

Related Posts:

Guyana atop Dengue for Carifesta X, Dengue pummels Venezuela, Dengue Totals Rising…

 

Dengue in the Americas currently (update 3, June 18)

Dengue outbreaks have now been reported in Argentina, Bolivia and in Bahai, Brazil, Paraguay and Mexico.

Brazil continues to top the Clinical infections list with a tally of  226,513 Suspected Dengue Cases at Week 15, up from 126,139 Suspected Cases at last count.  To date, 1,416 persons have suffered from the complications of Dengue Hemorrhagic Fever/Dengue Shock Syndrome.  87 DHF/DSS Cases resulted in death.

Although Bolivia submitted five more weeks’ worth of Dengue records to the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) than Brazil, the number of Clinical infections at 59,937 Cases, was still well back from Brazil’s, but with a much lower death toll.  Bolivia has not admitted to any more than 25 deaths (a figure that has remained unchanged over several weeks) from the 188 DHF/DSS Cases up to Week 20.

All things considered, this is undoubtedly Bolivia’s worst outbreak in decades, one that has spread to Argentina where the size of the event in terms of the number of  Clinically Confirmed Cases (24,720) and geographic spread is at a ten-year high.

Nevertheless, in spite of the fact that the DHF/DSS complications (6) and deaths (5) were minimal in Argentina, in  late May, when compared to what obtained in Bolivia, this event has still eclipsed the 1998 Argentina epidemic in magnitude. Most of those deaths have occurred in the northern provinces of Chaco and Catarmaca.

A spokesperson for the international humanitarian group Doctors of the World said the number of cases may be three times higher than what the government puts out.  That though might still be a modest calculation since the rule of thumb is a factor of 10. (Source: Wall Street Journal)

For countries in the Americas that, for one reason or the other, had not declared Dengue Outbreaks, the situation may be no less serious.  Take for instance Venezuela, on the tip of the South American mainland.  It could well be an issue of semantics that an Outbreak Alert was not posted there.  Venezuela has reported 14,167 Clinical Cases through Week 17.

Columbia, on the other hand, had not conducted any Laboratory Confirmations, preferring to go with Clinical Confirmations only.  So as it stood at Week 17, Columbia had 14,151 Clinical Cases, 16 less than Venezuela ’s 1,167 for the same period.  For what it was worth, Venezuela and Columbia were at the top of the DHF/DSS list at the end of March.

At the beginning of May,  DHF/DSS in Columbia numbered 2,o06 with 1,230 in Venezuela.  And to top that off, Columbia buried 17 (seventeen) persons to Venezuela’s 0 (nought).

Paraguay and Mexico, two countries which were once in the second tier of nations with Dengue along with Honduras, El Salvador and Peru, now have an elevated profile as Dengue Cases there keep rising.

Paraguay may have had more Confirmed Cases of Classic Dengue back in April.  But for what it was worth, Mexico was in a cloudier state at the time due to a higher percentage of DHF/DSS Cases, 534 from 2,624 Clinical/Confirmed Cases to Paraguay’s 1 out of 2,963.  On Week 16, Mexico’s figures had climbed to 723 DHF/DSS Cases out of 3,784 Cases.   In the interim, Paraguay’s Cases had more than doubled to 4,912  by Week 20 while the death toll was stuck on 1.  (The rationale for this is simple: DHF/DSS statistics indicate the degree of susceptibility of the given population based on the circulation of multiple virus types, one or more of which would have previously infected the resident generation within that population.)

Honduras and El Salvador had 2 deaths between them up to March month-end.  Oddly enough the incidence rate for the former was ten times higher than for the latter because of the number of DHF/DSS Cases, 171 in Honduras, 7 in El Salvador.  Nothing changed in regards to Honduras in the ensuing months be no further reporting of Dengue was forthcoming from that Central American country.  El Salvador has added a few more weeks of data to their pool to derive 1,638 Clinical Cases and 6 DHF/DSS Cases on Week 19.

Closer home in the Caribbean basin, Aruba was way out front with 2,652 Clinical Cases, followed by French Guiana (807), Suriname (241) and Guyana (492) for countries with more than one hundred Clinical Cases. Of those four countries, only Guyana was diligent enough to update the PAHO database since the last go around. Also, Guyana kept its perfect record of confirming all Clinical Cases. Not so Aruba, which does not have such a policy, a position I would not support unless the numbers would overwhelm the countries’ laboratories.

GUYANA DENGUE UPDATE at April 20: The Dengue count rose to 424, almost 300% higher than for the same period last year when 108 Cases were recorded.  This, in spite of a drop in the number of cases coming out of Georgetown and Lethem, attributed to the fogging that was done there   And still, there were unreported cases, according to Health Minister, Dr. Leslie Ramsammy.

Health Minister Ramsammy was convinced that there will be an outbreak of Dengue in Guyana unless people keep their environment clean, get rid of the abundance of discarded tires they have on their premises and prevent mosquitoes from breeding in their water tanks.

Minister Ramsammy revealed too that fogging would be done in Georgetown every three months. (Source: Dengue on the rise, Stabroek News)

The other Caribbean countries with in-country Dengue were French St. Martin (68), St. Barths (46), Barbados (25), Martinique (15), Guadeloupe (13), Jamaica (12), Trinidad and Tobago (10), Grenada (7), St. Lucia (6), St. Vincent and the Grenadines (5), British Virgin Islands (3) and St. Kitts and Nevis (1).

DHF/DSS in the Caribbean number 61, Suriname (57), Aruba (2), French Guiana and Guyana (1 each).  The two DHF/DSS Cases in French Guiana and Guyana expired.

(The Non-Hispanic Caribbean includes Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Aruba, Bahamas, Barbados, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Curacao, Dominica, French Guiana, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Martinique, Montserrat, Netherlands Antilles, St. Bartholomew, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Martin, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, Turks and Caicos Islands, and US Virgin Islands.)

 

Belize PM Barrow too?

Belize

Yet another head of state from the wider Caribbean has been smitten by Dengue Fever.  First there was DR Vice President Rafael Albuquerque who was hospitalized on Sunday, August 17 2008 with Dengue Fever, one day after his swearing-in ceremony.  In September of that year, Trinidad Minister of Health Jerry Narace suffered the same fate, although he would not admit it.  Now, guess whose turn it is? Prime Minister of Belize Dean Barrow.

PM Barrow‘s office confirmed this in a brief statement issued on Tuesday, September 29  2009. Barrow was absent from work for the rest of that week.

Source: caribarena.com

 

Dengue plays second fiddle to AH1N1 (updated)

Puerto Rico

updated on October 12  2009

The AH1N1 (Swine Flu) has, in the past year, been receiving a considerable amount of attention from Caribbean health authorities, seemingly to the detriment of the more longstanding Dengue problem in the region.  Puerto Rico based blogger Adrianna has taken note of this.  She made the following comment to that effect on September 5, 2009 on her blog Observations from the ‘Island of Enchantment’:

We are currently in the peak of the hurricane season…and this is also a period in which more cases of dengue fever are reported.  However, now with all the attention on the swine flu, it seems as though the dangers of dengue fever have been pushed to the (back burner).  When visiting Puerto Rico’s Department of Health Website, the first thing you’ll see are the statistics on the swine flu…

Every year though, thousands of people on the island become infected with dengue fever and hundreds have died from it throughout the world.  As one of the local newspapers interestingly pointed out, dengue fever is more likely to be a greater threat in Puerto Rico than the swine flu.

PR Senator Luis Daniel Muniz took notice of this discrepancy too when reviewing the Dengue statistics up to the end of August.  For him, 150 new Suspected Dengue Cases and 3,256 total, demanded action. Muniz, therefore, instructed secretary of the Department of Health Lorenzo Gonzalez to promote an island-wide fogging campaign to regain control of the situation.

Muniz was reported in pontealdia.com as saying ”We cannot focus solely on addressing the transmission of the virus AH1N1 while Dengue cases continue to rise in Puerto Rico.“

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia, confirmed one Dengue death in April, an eight-year old girl from central Puerto Rico.

There was also an unconfirmed press report of the death of a nine-year old from the same general area.

One month on, the incidence of Dengue continues to soar so much so that at October 10, the total number for the year was 94 higher than for the same time last year.

To date, Puerto Rico has recorded no less than 155 Dengue Cases.  And to quote Dr. Martha Patricia Cano, Director of Dengue Prevention, there were also 42 Dengue Hemorrhagic Fever cases.  Dr. Cano maintained that there has been only one case due to the disease, thereby discounting earlier media reports of a second.  (Source: flutrackers.com)

 

Sanofi Dengue vaccine trials take a step forward

Sanofi Pasteur has taken yet another step forward in the development of its investigational, novel tetravalent Dengue vaccine candidate with advanced clinical studies among children and adults in Singapore and Vietnam.  Part of a global clinical study programme being undertaken in endemic regions in Asia and Latin America, these studies mark the expansion of  sanofi-aventis Group’s Asia-Pacific Dengue vaccine programme from Thailand and the Philippines.

Clinical trials have been completed in a mix of non-endemic and endemic countries, namely the United States of America, Mexico and the Philippines.  However, clinical studies of Asian adults and child subjects are ongoing in the Philippines and Thailand as well as in Peru and Mexico in Latin America.  With specific reference to Thailand’s children, the goal of the studies is to determine vaccine efficacy against asymptomatic Dengue.

The initial results show that three doses of the vaccine are sufficient to elicit a balanced immunological response against the four Dengue serotypes.  Additionally, tolerance and safety appear to be good.

Sanofi Pasteur is working jointly with Singapore’s Communicable Disease Centre and Vietnam’s Pasteur Institute. Sanofi Pasteur is the vaccines arm of sanofi-aventis Group.  Their tetravalent Dengue vaccine, the first to get this far along, targets all four Dengue virus strains simultaneously.

(Source: intellasia.net)

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