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Health Ministry confirms dengue fever outbreak in Jamaica
12:46 pm, Thu October 11, 2012
<span style="font-weight: bold">The Health Ministry has confirmed an outbreak of dengue fever in Jamaica.</span>
The Ministry provided an update on the dengue fever cases affecting the country at a press conference this morning.
As at September 29, there have been one thousand 215 cases of suspected dengue with 45 confirmed cases.
Of that number there have been five suspected deaths, with one confirmed.
According to the Ministry of Health, the victim was a 15 year boy from Kingston and St. Andrew who also had the sickle cell disease.
But the Acting Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Michael Coombs urged the public not to panic:
“We have seen an increase and strictly speaking it could be described as an outbreak, however but I would like to make it very clear that compared to the outbreak in 2010 where the numbers were significantly higher, so in that context we would like to think, we’re pretty convinced that out efforts are bearing fruit in terms of restricting the numbers thus far. So yes strictly speaking we are having an outbreak based on the number of suspected cases of dengue.”
In 2010 which was considered an outbreak year, there were three thousand and two suspected cases of dengue fever.