![]() ![]() The number of cases have exploded since then and if that rate persisted hundreds of people would be dying each year, he said. Amarasekera said that in 2009, about one percent of those with dengue died. Our other objective is to reduce and maintain the case fatality rate below 0.1 percent by 2023, or one death for 1000 cases,” he said.ĭr. So basically to keep the cases below 22,000 as we have about 22 million people. “One of the objectives of the national dengue prevention and control campaign is to reduce the prevalence below 100 out of 100,000 Sri Lankans. Given that these are often breadwinners of the family, there is delayed medical attention seeking behaviour among the working population and that causes complications. Among the cases, about 62 percent belong to the working population. Amarasekera said on average its men who mainly contract dengue, about 57 percent. We are doing a lot to prevent this,” he said.ĭr. An outbreak on top of a high baseline could mean trouble. However, this year the baseline, too, has been high – this can especially be seen in the Gampaha District. We usually have two periods, following the monsoons, where cases spike, but the baseline is relatively low. “If you can control dengue in the Western province, it can have a big impact. The Eastern province accounts for 12.2 percent and the Northwestern province accounts for 10.3 percent, of the cases. Amarasekera added that in the first 20 weeks of 2022, there were 9837 cases in the Western Province, this year the number is 17,715, which is about 49.6 percent of cases. So, they also contributed to increasing the numbers,” he said.ĭr. ![]() After 2009, there is more awareness of dengue, patients identified the symptoms and doctors were actively looking for cases. Then we saw about 35,000 to 50,000 cases a year until about 2016, and in 2017, we saw 186,101 cases. “In 2009, we saw an outbreak where we recorded 35,095 cases. Jagath Amarasekera, Public Health Specialist, National Dengue Control Unit, Ministry of Health, said that Sri Lanka serologically confirmed dengue in 1962 and that dengue fever was made a notifiable disease in 1996.įrom 1990 to around 2008 there were about 4000 to 10,000 cases of dengue a year. The Regional Epidemiologist at the CMC also said that the actual number of dengue cases could be three times that of reported cases.ĭr. About 35 percent of the CMC health budget is spent on dengue-related activities,” she said. Another 25 percent of the budget was spent on other dengue-related activities. Guruge added that the CMC spent as much as 10 percent of its annual health budget on chemicals used for dengue control. Those at the CMC have been dealing with this kind of situation for the last decade,” she said.ĭr. Which means we have to look forward to an outbreak close to 2017 and Sri Lankan medical officers are working to prevent that from happening. Right now, the number of cases we see in 2023 is only second to what we saw in 2017. “In 2017, there were about 300 dengue cases a week in the CMC area. The highest number of dengue cases in Sri Lanka was reported in 2017. Dinu Guruge, Consultant for Dengue Global Programme – Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi) and Regional Epidemiologist at Colombo Municipal Council (CMC) said during an event organised by the International Society for Neglected Tropical Diseases recently. The current statistical trends indicate that the number of Sri Lanka’s dengue patients this year can be as high as in 2017 where 186,101 cases were reported, Dr. ![]()
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