Cities Wage Dengue Battle on U.S.-Mexico Border (Brownsville, TX)

SunHerlad.com ^ | Nov. 17, 2002 | Reuters

[madfly]

MONTERREY, Mexico - Officials on the U.S.-Mexico border on Sunday stepped up efforts to contain a dengue outbreak in the Mexican city of Matamoros after health authorities confirmed 24 cases and suspected another 222.

Matamoros Public Health Director Ernesto Chanes said six of the suspected cases of dengue in the 450,000-strong city were the potentially lethal hemorrhagic dengue strain. Although, he said to date no deaths had been reported.

Matamoros city workers are spraying neighborhoods where dengue cases have been confirmed and soldiers are patrolling streets looking for stagnant pools of water to contain the outbreak and stop it spreading to the U.S. city of Brownsville, Texas, across the Rio Grande from Matamoros, Chanes said.

Brownsville health director Josue Ramirez said the city was testing mosquitoes on a daily basis to monitor the disease and also spraying to kill off mosquitoes and larvae. To date no case has been confirmed, Ramirez said.

The Matamoros outbreak is one of the most concentrated in Mexico this year. The World Health Organization (WHO) reported 3,766 cases of classic and hemorrhagic dengue in the first eight months of the year in Mexico as a whole.

Dengue epidemics in Honduras and El Salvador, two Central American nations to the south of Mexico, forced their governments to declare national emergencies in July that freed up funding to fight the spread of the disease.

In Honduras, 16 people died from the 27,113 confirmed cases of dengue up to the end of August, according to WHO statistics. In El Salvador, 10 deaths were reported from the 17,648 confirmed cases in the same time frame.

[madfly]

Brownsville wary of dengue fever outbreak across border
EFE - 11/16/2002

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - After 21 cases of dengue fever were reported in the neighboring Mexican city of Matamoros, authorities in this predominantly Hispanic community have become increasingly vigilant to avert outbreaks of the mosquito-borne disease.

Although four years have passed since the last case of dengue was reported in Brownsville, health authorities are worried by the situation just across the border.

In the neighboring state of Tamaulipas, 63 cases of dengue fever have been reported this year.

Brownsville Public Health chief Jose Ramirez said the cases were reported largely in poor neighborhoods, especially in the port of Tampico, which is six hours from the Texas border.

Those cases were reported after heavy rainfall in the area two weeks ago.

There is no vaccine against the dengue virus, the symptoms of which range from muscle ache and fever to fatal hemorrhaging in the most severe cases. The tropical disease is spread by the bite of the Aedes Aegypti mosquito.

The symptoms can be misleading, often causing dengue fever to be mistaken for the flu.

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, three cases of dengue fever have been reported in the past 16 years in southern Texas, all of which occurred in tandem with outbreaks in northern Mexico.

The Brownsville Public Health Department has been collecting mosquito samples from across the city and spraying pesticides to reduce the risk of an outbreak.

[spodefly]

Open the borders and let them in ... they are just here to have the diseases Americans don't want to have.

[Catspaw]

The symptoms can be misleading, often causing dengue fever to be mistaken for the flu.

Dengue fever is like having the worst flu you ever had, multiplied by a zillion.

I caught a case, probably while we were in southern Mexico touring various ruins, and it was nasty, nasty, nasty. The ER doc in Wisconsin who diagnosed the case, however, was overjoyed when he finally saw an actual case of dengue.

[Catspaw]

Dengue fever is caused by mosquitoes. I don't know how you could prevent mosquitoes from crossing over the border unless you put up a huge mosquito net from Texas to California.

[madfly]

ping

[spodefly]

A huge mosquito net from Texas to California is a good start ... add in some giant Citronella candles and a few thousand bug lights and it might just work.

[Catspaw]

Plus getting rid of standing water & spraying for mosquitoes--the same way one lessens the chances of getting West Nile.

It took me about 2 months to recover from dengue. It wasn't pretty, but at least I didn't have the more severe type of dengue.

[CindyDawg]

Brownsville wary of dengue fever outbreak across border

Hmmmm. I need to spend less time on free republic, sign up for local channels and read those Brownsville Heralds piling up. LOL CD

[RedWhiteBlue]

So you know why Dengue's nickname is "breakbone fever."

[madfly]

LOL

[Catspaw]

Oh, yeah, I know the name is "breakbone fever." Every joint in my body hurt--heck, EVERYTHING hurt. But it was the vomiting & high fever that did me in. I really wanted to die. Having influenza is a piece of cake compared to dengue. I mean I can see docs confusing the initial symptoms of dengue with the flu, but once it starts going, there's no confusing it with something else.

What was truly annoying was having to contend with a young & very excited ER doc, who, after he diagnosed me, proceeded to show my body to every last person in the hospital(given how many people who paraded through my room, it must've included janitors, laundry workers, dieticians & passersby), saying, "!THIS! is a case of dengue fever!" He was just so proud of his little self. All I wanted to do was be Left Alone. And it's not as though they can do anything but treat the symptoms.

[skeeter]

Coming to a town near you.

[Calamari]

DDT It is time to bring it back!

[madfly]

you got that right!

[Doctor Stochastic]

Sort of like the first day you are afraid that you will die and on the second day you are afraid that you won't.

[montag813]

A huge mosquito net from Texas to California is a good start ... add in some giant Citronella candles and a few thousand bug lights and it might just work.

I suggest anti-personnel landmines every 6 ft from California to Texas.

[etcetera]

We had recent outbreaks here in Hawaii, mostly in east Maui. The state went on a big campaign to get rid of standing water where mosquitos breed. They suspect it came in via someone who visited Fiji where they had an outbreak and got bitten by a mosquito there, then came to Hawaii and got bit by mosquitos here. The problem seems to have died down somewhat, haven't heard of any new cases in the news...

[Catspaw]

Pretty much. I felt like a triple trailer semi had driven back & forth over my head & body for about 12 hours--and then I REALLY got sick.

It's not something I want to repeat. Ever. And all because we wanted to see the Olmec heads in Villahermosa and tour the ruins in Palenque....and we had run out of US made Off. The Mexican stuff seemed to attract mosquitoes, not repel them.

[dirtboy]

What was truly annoying was having to contend with a young & very excited ER doc, who, after he diagnosed me, proceeded to show my body to every last person in the hospital(given how many people who paraded through my room, it must've included janitors, laundry workers, dieticians & passersby), saying, "!THIS! is a case of dengue fever!"

I imagine you wanted to make that doc's joints hurt...

[Catspaw]

If I could've lifted my arms to toss a full bedpan at him, I would've. I felt like a circus freak. I know that dengue fever just isn't that common in Green Bay, Wisconsin, but that was truly annoying.

Just a few years ago, the father of a classmate of my daughter picked up a case of malaria when he went on an African safari--died of it, too. I just hope he wasn't treated the same way I was treated.