Dengue Fever - an Escalating Threat
By Philip Hosbach & Stuart Feldman
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported last May, 28 cases of dengue fever acquired by people who lived in or had visited Key West, FL. This news on dengue raised the eyebrows of public health experts. The Key West cases were the first dengue infections reported in the continental United States, outside the Texas-Mexico border, in 65 years. There is no effective treatment against dengue and vector control has proven ineffective. While dengue fever is still primarily a tropical disease that occurs in cycles in South Asia and Central and South America, the Key West outbreak is a loud wake-up call to the rapid growth and geographic spread of dengue over the past three decades and the need for a preventative vaccine.
