PUNE: A 61-year-old woman from Khutgaon village in Pune district died on Monday due to dengue haemorrhagic fever at the KEM Hospital, a civic health official said on Tuesday.

This is the fifth dengue death confirmed by the Pune Municipal Corporation since January. While a 23-year-old man from Solapur district also died of dengue shock syndrome at KEM Hospital on Monday, his death was confirmed by civic officials the same day.

Mumbai:The H1N1 virus may be back in circulation but it is actually malaria and dengue that is plaguing Mumbaikars.

According to BMC data, 693 people contracted malaria and 94 were treated for dengue in January. None of the vector-borne ailments claimed any lives. Physicians said it is common to treat at least a couple of malaria cases on a daily basis during this time of the year. But dengue cases should not be rampant now. A senior physician from KEM Hospital said the severity of dengue cases as compared to last year had come down.

As four more of Government Siddha Medical College test positive

Four students of the Government Siddha Medical College have tested positive to dengue fever, raising the on-campus tally to 12. Students have been working closely with health authorities to contain the outbreak of the disease in pockets of the district. A final year postgraduate student, Kaathavarayan from Aranthaangi, currently under observation in the intensive care unit, has also tested positive for typhoid, a water-borne disease.

Health authorities in the Brazilian city of Campo Grande, in the southern state of Mato Grosso do Sul, are fighting a dengue fever epidemic.

Health authorities in the Brazilian city of Campo Grande, in the southern state of Mato Grosso do Sul, are fighting a dengue fever epidemic.

The disease burden saw 14 per cent increase to 31,536 cases per district during October from September’s 27,587 cases.

Leading hospitals receive minimum of five patients in a week

After claiming more than forty lives in Tirunelveli district during the previous outbreak in the first quarter last year, dengue has reared its ugly head again in the city with almost all leading hospitals here receiving a minimum of five dengue patients every week. Though the latest outbreak has not resulted in any death so far, the disease has triggered panic among the public. The fear has increased manifold as anti-mosquito operations, carried out by the Corporation, have come to a grinding halt.

Dengue fever is now the fastest spreading insect-borne virus in the world and has reached “epidemic potential,” the World Health Organization says.

The World Health Organisation said on Wednesday that it had charted progress in the fight against tropical diseases but warned that dengue fever was spreading at an alarming rate.