Dengue Fever

Not long after my arrival on Bequia in the 70’s I came down with dengue fever, and it was a horrible experience!  I was never tested for the virus, in fact there was no doctor on the Island at the time, but was assured by those who had already suffered dengue that I had been infected by mosquitoes carrying the disease. I had of course heard of malaria, and from what I was able to glean, dengue fever was a tropical ailment quite similar to that dreaded illness.

I suffered intensely for one week, with a temperature of 104 that caused delirium, and a searing pain behind my eyes. Every bone in my body felt as though it had been broken, I pretty much crawled to the kitchen when I needed more drinking water. I remained sick for another two weeks, not as severely as the first week, but bad enough to keep me confined to my bed. I recovered from the dengue, but each day at around five o’clock I got a slight fever and chills, a condition that continued for several months. Dengue is a very debilitating illness and there’s no real treatment for it; I found it much worse than a bad case of the flu, and there wasn’t anything I could do for myself other than drink plenty of fluids and wait for it to go away.

Dengue fever is a mosquito-borne tropical disease caused by the dengue virus, and is therefore a viral infection. It is spread through the bite of the Aedes Aegypti species of mosquito, the species which also spreads Zika and Chikungunya. The mosquitoes typically lay eggs near standing (still) water, such as that found in pet dishes and planter bases, and the mosquitoes themselves become carriers when they bite a person with the virus. The Aedes mosquito tends to be most active for the two hours just after the sun rises, and in the evening before the sun sets. The offender can be identified by the white markings on its legs, and although hard to check, the mosquito has to be a pregnant female!

I can recall a time when regular inspections were carried out on all properties by the Ministry of Health. The inspector looked for, and requested the removal of, any containers where stagnant water was in evidence. This health inspection was done in an effort to deter the breeding of mosquitoes, with the dreaded fogging a last-resort measure. When the fogging WAS deemed necessary it was horrible;  the machines sprayed malathion into the atmosphere in an effort to  kill the mosquitoes, and while it was semi-effective in that department it harmed agriculture and other, more valuable insects such as bees.  On one memorable occasion a team with a hand-held fogger walked through my restaurant, spraying the toxic chemical while diners were trying to eat!  Fogging with the use of malathion still occurs, usually from the back of a truck, but the property inspections unfortunately seem to be a thing of the past.

In 2016 St. Vincent had what was deemed a bad dengue outbreak, with 200 laboratory-confirmed cases. Due to the fact that testing for the infection was only carried out when people were sick enough to seek medical attention, I assume the number of cases was most likely much higher than 200. 2016, however, was NOTHING compared to the dengue outbreak of 2020, a natural assumption when the Ministry of Health reported 1,155 lab-confirmed cases and six deaths. At a time when the public waited with bated breath for news of hospitalizations and deaths due to Covid-19, we were instead presented with alarming numbers for dengue fever.

Can the dengue outbreak of 2020, and the cases reported, be due to the huge increase in vigorous testing whenever a person becomes ill?  When no testing is carried out there’s no confirmation of disease, whether it be Covid, Dengue or any other dire medical condition, but during the covid pandemic the testing of sick people is automatic. It certainly gives food for thought. After all, my case of dengue fever would not have been recorded; I didn’t seek medical attention when I became ill and was therefore never tested, and I am sure such was the case for many people who got sick prior to the Covid-19 outbreak.