Recent Epidemiological Trends, the Global Strategy and Public Health Advances in Dengue

We conservatively estimate that, since the last meeting of the Scientific Working Group (SWG) on Dengue in 2000 [9], there has been an increase of 110 million in the number of persons living in urban areas of the world with a high burden of dengue [10]. Approximately 975 million people now live in these urban areas, that is, almost half the global population estimated to be at risk of dengue infection. By decade, the annual average number of cases of dengue fever or severe dengue reported to the World Health Organization (WHO) continues to grow exponentially. For the first 5 years of the current decade, the annual average number of cases was 925 896, almost double the figure for 1990–1999 (479 848 cases) (Figure 1). In 2001, a record 69 countries from the WHO Regions of South-East Asia, Western Pacific, and the Americas reported dengue activity (Figure 1). In 2002, the WHO Region of the Americas reported more than 1 million cases for the first time. Although there is poor surveillance and no official reporting of dengue to WHO from countries in the WHO African Region and the Eastern Mediterranean Region, recent outbreaks of suspected dengue have been recorded in Madagascar