Accepted in 17/05/2012

At this moment, when the Brazilian people feels optimistic about the country development and a promising future, unfortunately it is time to face the reality that dengue, a disease caused by dengue flaviviruses of serotypes 1 through 4: dengue virus 1, 2, 3 and 4 (DENV-1, 2, 3 and 4), remains a national tragedy. Over the last 31 years we have been striken by successive outbreaks of this arboviral disease, transmitted to man by the mosquito Aedes aegypti. The incidence of dengue has been on an upward trend, and in the last decade 700,000 cases have been reported per year. Most Brazilian states are infested by Aedes aegypti and endure dengue transmission. The average age of dengue hemorrhagic fever patients has decreased, turning it into a disease that affects a rising proportion of children. In recent years dengue outbreaks have included many atypical cases, including myocarditis, hepatitis, meningoencephalitis and acute kidney failure, and fatality rates have also increased. Two papers on dengue, one from North and another from South Brazil, are being published in this issue of the Journal of the Brazilian Society of Tropical Medicine. One paper reports on the dengue situation in 2011 in Manaus, a large city of North Brazil, capital of the State of Amazonas. Patients with acute febrile illness were tested for dengue by reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and nested PCR, and 137 of 432 were found to be positive