Saturday 12 December 2009

A Dengue mozzi up close and personal

As Townsville residents are being urged to protect themselves against dengue fever, there has already been a spike of locally-acquired cases in the region over the past few days.

There have now been 10 confirmed dengue type one cases in Townsville, which began in Heatley in early November.

The outbreak has now spread to Garbutt, Stuart and Wulguru.

“We have had seven cases confirmed in just the past few days,” said Dr Donohue of Queensland Health .

“I am also concerned because people contracted dengue from infected dengue mosquitos in areas with no known link to earlier generations of transmission. This means there have been infectious cases moving around that we do not know about."

The North Queensland dengue epidemics during the last wet season were the largest in at least 50 years.

Dengue outbreaks spread to Townsville in December 2008, with 57 type one and sixteen type three cases confirmed with the mosquito-borne disease, before it was declared over in May.

The rest of north Queensland had 915 cases during the same period, mainly in Cairns.

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