Dozens of feverish patients on drips were lying on beds, lined up one after the other, in a vast room. Families at the bedside of their suffering loved ones massaged their arms and legs in an attempt to relieve aches and pains. "I've been ill for more than 10 days," Mehdi Hassan said with difficulty on Monday, November 27, before going back to bed, overcome like the others by the dengue virus.
The tuk-tuk driver, from a village some 100 kilometers from Dhaka, was admitted two days ago to Mugda Medical College and Hospital, a public facility in the Bangladeshi capital. There is no cure for dengue fever, and only the most serious cases require hospitalization. Transmitted to humans by infected mosquitoes, this virus causes high fevers, headaches, nausea and vomiting, as well as intense muscle and joint pain, and can even lead to death.
Never before has Bangladesh seen such an explosion of cases. Between January 1 and December 1, 2023, more than 310,000 people were infected with the virus and 1,628 died, according to official figures. This is the deadliest year since the country's first dengue epidemic in 2000. The current death toll is already more than five times higher than last year, when the country recorded 281 virus-related deaths.
"This year, we're once again facing a real dengue epidemic, even if the government hasn't officially declared it as such," said Manjur Ahmed Chowdhury, who heads the Center for Governance Studies, a think-tank based in Bangladesh. "We also know that for every case officially recorded, 20 others are not, so we estimate that figures are actually 20 times higher," continued the entomologist.
"At the peak of the crisis, we were treating thousands of patients and it was difficult for us to ensure adequate follow-up – many among them didn't survive," confirmed Madhuri Roy. Roy was specially transferred from another facility at the start of the monsoon season to take care of dengue cases at Mugda, where the aging infrastructure seems to lack everything, including nursing staff. During July and August, the influx of dengue patients was such that the 10th and 11th floors were requisitioned for them. Hospitals were on the verge of an explosion. "Beds were full and patients were being set up on the floor right up to the balconies and in front of the elevator entrances," recalled the doctor.
The virus usually rages from July to September, before subsiding when the monsoon season ends. But at the end of November, an entire floor of this public hospital had been reserved for patients who had contracted the virus. As of December 1, there were still 3,358 active cases in the country, including 888 in Dhaka and 2,470 outside the capital. This year, dengue has spread throughout the country's 64 districts, even into villages, which may partly explain the particularly high number of deaths. "It is unusual that the number of cases is still so high at the end of the year, and there has also been a significant increase in the virus in rural areas, whereas previously it was confined to Dhaka and major urban centers," noted Chowdhury.
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