[health-vn] Dengue fever ravishes southern Vietnam

[Vern Weitzel]

http://english.vietnamnet.vn/Health/2009/05/846650/

Dengue fever ravishes southern Vietnam
14:24' 09/05/2009 (GMT+7)

VietNamNet Bridge - More than 13,000 people in southern Vietnam have contracted 
dengue fever already this year, and 11 of them had died as of May 3, the 
director of the Pasteur Institute in Ho Chi Minh City said Friday.


The south, where the disease is far more prevalent, accounts for 84.4 percent of 
the current number of dengue fever cases nationwide, Dr. Tran Ngoc Huu told a 
press conference.

Dengue is no longer restricted to the rainy season and could strike at any time 
of the year, he said.

Unsurprisingly, it is among the top five infectious diseases with the highest 
numbers of cases and deaths in Vietnam.

The poor drainage in slum areas, a result of the country’s urbanization and 
industrialization, along with the warm climate create the ideal conditions for 
dengue fever to break out.

There is no commercial vaccine to protect against dengue yet, but several 
vaccines are at the experimental stage, Huu said.

The Pasteur Institute is working with Sanofi-Pasteur, the vaccines division of 
Sanofi-Aventis Group, to carry out clinical studies of Sanofi’s tetravalent 
dengue vaccine, which is also being trialed in Thailand, the Philippines and 
Singapore.

If the trials yield good results, a novel vaccine against dengue will be 
available in 2015 or 2016, said Wartel Nguyen N.T. Anh, SanofiPasteur’s regional 
medical director of clinical development.

The mosquito-borne disease, which is caused by any of four viruses, infects an 
estimated 230 million people annually and is a potential threat to almost half 
the world’s population, according to Sanofi-Aventis.

VietNamNet/TN