Epidemics Spreading as Result of Economic Collapse, War
Nearly one in 10 workers in Rio de Janeiro has contracted dengue fever in the epidemic sweeping the state, according to a survey carried out by the state's Federation of Industries. A doctor working for the Federation warned that if the current rate of infection continues, within two weeks, some small companies could be forced to stop production altogether, because of illness among their workers. More than 1,600 new cases are being reported each day, with 430,000 people infected so far.
Dengue fever is called colloquially "break-bone fever" because of the severity of the pains and fever associated with it. At least 18 people had died from the hemorrhagic strain, as of Feb. 27.
The incidence of dengue has been increasing throughout the Americas, including in the southern United States. Health emergencies have been declared in El Salvador and some areas of Peru, as well as Rio. The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) warned Feb. 21 that the number of cases in the Americas has "exploded from 66,000 in 1980, to more than 717,000 in 1998."
Responsibility for the mosquito-borne epidemic lies with the IMF and related free-trade policies, and generalized economic collapse. The PAHO called dengue "basically a problem of domestic sanitation," whose spread PAHO attributes to "lack of good, inexpensive insecticides, lack of financial resources, deterioration in prevention and control programs," and cutbacks in surveillance programs for the mosquito.
Meanwhile, in Afghanistan--with war raging now, and with a history of 22 years of war and upheaval before now--a form of hemorrhagic fever not yet identified, has broken out in eastern Afghanistan, in a village 210 miles from Kabul. So far, the fever has reportedly killed 28 people, mainly children, according to a UN official on the scene. Late last month, in neighboring Pakistan, Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever broke out, killing three. The World Health Organization is expected to send representatives to the region to identify the disease in Afghanistan, and assess how to respond.
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