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Next Bioterror Shoe to Drop: Dengue Fever?
Dave Eberhart, NewsMax.com
Saturday, Oct. 27, 2001
Investors seeking to cash in on bioterrorism fears and the billions of dollars potentially flowing to biochemical, pharmaceutical and medical equipment manufacturers should consider investing in those making products that treat E. coli, dengue fever and tuberculosis, according to TheStreet.com.
"Which companies benefit, of course, depends on what kind of infectious diseases or toxins the terrorists try to use. Anthrax is only one possible scenario,” said the report, which was silent about smallpox, the contagion often mentioned as the next shoe likely to drop.
A cautious administration was less helpful to info-hungry investors.
On the Hill last Tuesday, when Health Secretary Tommy Thompson was asked what new bio-agent exposures Americans could expect, he replied: "I cannot go into that due to national security issues.” Shortly thereafter, Thompson excused himself, citing a pressing meeting at his agency’s "war room” regarding "all threats.”
A key recommendation from Thompson was getting qualified epidemiologists on health staffs at the state level. Now, he testified, only 35 of the 50 states had such experts on staff. Further, he recommended that the state epidemiologists be as rigorously trained as their federal counterparts in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
No mention by Thompson during his testimony of dengue fever, despite the fact that the recent outbreak of the disease in Hawaii has some epidemiologists there stumped and one local legislator calling for the immediate levy of environmental SWAT teams.
Hawaii health officials confirmed this week that three more people tested positive for dengue fever, raising the number of infected people to 62. Officials are now investigating 258 people who may be infected.
The outbreaks, which ominously came to a head in mid-September, are the first documented local transmission of the virus in Hawaii since 1943.
Furthermore, say epidemiologists on the scene, the incidence of the mosquito-borne infection has been unaccountably increasing among island residents who have no history of recent travel out of the islands.
Also cited as troubling by the experts is the fact that the "Aedes Aegypti” mosquito, the classic carrier of the disease, has not been detected in Hawaii for nearly 50 years, since its eradication by pesticides.
According to experts at the CDC, the only other carrier candidate is Hawaii’s Asian tiger mosquito, "Aedes Albopictus.” But experts say this insect is an inefficient carrier of the virus.
CDC epidemiologists remain in East Maui trying to solve the puzzle.
Dengue is not often life threatening, say experts, but can be severe in second infections with another type of the virus.
"The second or third infections can cause dengue hemorrhagic fever or dengue shock syndrome, conditions which can be fatal,” Hawaii’s health director Bruce Anderson said. The most severe outbreaks, added Anderson, are in tropical areas under assault from a second wave of infection with a new type of dengue fever virus.
An outbreak of dengue hemorrhagic fever caused by dengue-2 affected more than 10,000 people in Delhi, India from August-December 1996 and killed 423 people between the ages of 5 and 45 years, said the National Institute of Communicable Diseases.
Sen. Kalani English, D-Wailuku-Kahului-Upcountry Maui, who was one of the first people to be stricken by dengue fever last August, said that having the virus was 50 times worse than any flu or cold he ever had. Dengue fever produces fever, headache and rashes on the palms and feet.
Defusing notions of terrorist involvement, Dr. Philip Bruno, chief of the communicable diseases division of Hawaii's department of health, told Reuters recently that the Hawaii outbreak appeared to be an extension of an Asia-Pacific epidemic of dengue, almost inevitable as travelers go back and forth between Hawaii and countries such as the Philippines.
"We feel that the Hawaii outbreak will not extend to a large number of people or get out of control, and will remain mild in comparison to the large epidemic affecting other tropical areas,” Bruno said.
In the meantime, Hawaii health officials, city workers and neighborhood volunteers started passing out informational flyers on dengue fever at 22 district parks last Saturday in an effort to let the public know what can be done to prevent dengue from spreading.
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