Health
Death toll from dengue since January tops 300 as cases surge to 63,968 in Bangladesh.

Death toll from dengue since January tops 300 as cases surge to 63,968 in Bangladesh

Health

After breaking the annual record, the death toll from dengue fever so far this year in Bangladesh has increased to 303 with 10 more fatalities reported in the government’s latest daily count.

The hospitals reported 2,495 new cases of the mosquito-borne disease in the 24 hours to Saturday morning, taking the tally of infections this year to 63,968, data from the Directorate General of Health Services showed.

As many as 1,426 new cases have been detected outside Dhaka, but seven of the deaths occurred in the capital. On Saturday morning, 9,334 dengue patients were in hospital care around the country, and 4,680 of them were in Dhaka.

The dengue outbreak has been worse in 2023 than in previous years.Last year, hospitals reported 62,382 patients taking medical care, and the death toll stood at 281, the previous highest since record-keeping began for dengue hospitalisations in the 1960s.

In 2019, Bangladesh witnessed over 100,000 dengue hospitalisations, a record number of cases in a single year. The official death toll that year was recorded at 179.

A pre-monsoon government-funded survey of Dhaka city has uncovered an alarming surge of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, known carriers of the dengue virus, fuelling the worst spread of the disease.

Most of the deaths caused by dengue occurred due to haemorrhagic fever and shock syndrome, which health experts associated with some new variants of the deadly virus, previously undetected in Bangladesh.