India is on top of the dengue list

VITAL SIGNS

Nearly 300 times as many people are hospitalised with severe dengue infections in India as are officially reported by the government, according to a recent study.

 The study of the mosquito-borne disease, by researchers at Brandeis University in Massachusetts, is part of a growing body of literature demonstrating that no country in the world suffers as many dengue infections as India. Officially, the Indian government reports that an average of about 20,000 people are hospitalised annually with dengue infections. The Brandeis study suggests that the real number of hospitalisations is closer to six million, and other studies have suggested that the actual number of Indians infected annually is probably more than 30 million!

“In absolute numbers of cases, we estimate that India has the highest number of cases,” Dr Donald S Shepard of Brandeis University, a co-author of the study, said in an interview.

The study’s methodology, which focussed on only one state in its clinical assessments and included broad assumptions about how patients seek care and are tested for the virus, probably underestimated the actual burden of the disease, Donald said.

Experts have long complained that India’s underestimates of the disease’s vast reach impede its people from taking preventive measures, discourage efforts to clean up the sources of the disease and slow research efforts for a vaccine. For some 80 percent of those infected, dengue causes only mild symptoms.

 The remaining 20 percent may be affected by more serious flu-like symptoms with pain that can be so intense that the illness has been called “breakbone fever.”