In the Antilles, health services are on alert. Dengue fever, a very debilitating condition transmitted by mosquitoes, even if it never completely disappears from Caribbean territories, is in the midst of a resurgence. “Since mid-August, we have even been at the stage of a confirmed epidemic”, underlines Mathilde Melin, deputy head of the Antilles unit at Public Health France (SPF). The passage in phase 4 of the epidemic (the most critical, phase 5 corresponding to the end of the epidemic), determined by the surveillance, alert and management plan for dengue epidemics, was activated, as at each epidemic session, the last having ended in 2021.
Latest known figures, 400 cases were confirmed in total in Guadeloupe and Martinique, for the last week of August, according to the regional epidemiological bulletin of SPF dated 1er september. In the week of September 7, SPF noted more than 1,300 so-called “suggestive” cases in the two territories. More widely in the Caribbean, the epidemic is also raging. “In Guatemala, there are 11,200 cases and 22 deaths”says M.me Melin. In Guadeloupe, Le Gosier, Trois-Rivières and Saint-François were particularly monitored at the start of summer. From now on, “all municipalities in the archipelago are concerned”according to the regional health agency, which has been warning of the resurgence of the virus since November 2022.
If, according to the Institut Pasteur, only 1% of cases lead to serious forms which can go as far as death, the rate of hospitalizations is increasing at the university hospital center (CHU) of the archipelago, according to the head of the infectiology department. , Samuel Markowicz. “For some time now, we have had almost four patients per week admitted to our services for dengue fever, and it is not calming down at all”notes the doctor, who recalls that contracting dengue fever once does not mean being totally immune. “There are four dengue serotypes, and if immunity exists after being infected with one of them, it is only valid for that serotype. »
No treatment
The one currently raging is serotype 2, already present in the period 2019-2021, during the previous epidemic in Guadeloupe which lasted seventy-three weeks. In Martinique, it spread during the 2013-2014 epidemic. “Depending on the contaminations that have already taken place, group immunity is not the same”underlines the doctor.
In the population, the disease is circulating at full speed. “I had a fever of up to 40 degrees for almost two weeks. My companion had to be hospitalized in a situation of advanced dehydration”testifies Marie-Amélie, a resident of the town of Deshaies, who, barely out of business, found that her daughter also contracted the disease, with the greatest difficulty in the world to have it confirmed: “Going to the laboratory for a blood test when you are sick is impossible”, she continues. Especially since, from now on, confirmations by blood test are reserved for the most serious cases and so-called vulnerable patients.
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