Duane Gubler On Dengue Fever
Further to my post on the West Nile virus the other day, it is worth reading Prof Duane Gubler’s analysis of mosquito borne diseases a few years ago.
Prof Gubler is arguably the world’s leading expert on the subject:
Extract
Yellow fever virus and its mosquito vector, Aedes aegypti, both of African origin, were introduced to the Western hemisphere in the 1600s by the slave trade, causing major epidemics of yellow fever that killed thousands of people in that region over a period of three and a half centuries.1
Through a combination of disciplined public health practices, effective mosquito control and vaccination, yellow fever and other major vector-borne diseases were effectively controlled in the 1950s and1960s, introducing a period of complacency and apathy that led some public health officials to declare the war on infectious diseases won.2
However, coincident with this complacent and optimistic post WWII period, several global trends were initiated, including unprecedented economic expansion, population growth, urbanization and development of new technology, which created ideal demographic, sociologic, epidemiologic and ecologic conditions for the re-emergence of epidemic infectious diseases.
The new jet air transportation system, which began to expand in the 1970s, provided the ideal mechanism to transport pathogens causing those diseases to new geographic areas.2,3
The increasingly frequent infectious disease epidemics and pandemics in the past few decades, especially arboviral diseases such as dengue, Zika and chikungunya that are also transmitted by Aedes aegypti mosquitoes in tropical urban cities, have alerted public health authorities to the potential spread once again of the dreaded yellow fever virus.
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