A 25-year-old young woman residing in Nouméa, New Caledonia, who had no particular medical history, has just died of dengue fever. This is the first victim since the start of the epidemic, declared on January 5, indicates the government of New Caledonia, in a press release.
More than 360 cases of dengue type 1, an acute infectious disease that causes high fever, headaches and joint pain, have been confirmed since the beginning of January, with 75% of Noumea’s neighborhoods currently affected by the epidemic.
Complications of the disease are life-threatening
The health authorities are therefore once again calling on the population to protect themselves from mosquito bites with the application of skin repellent products and to fight against the proliferation of these insects by destroying breeding sites. Each inhabitant of the archipelago is invited to remove any stagnant water by cleaning the gutters and eliminating anything that may contain rainwater near the dwellings. A task that is not facilitated by the heavy rains currently falling in New Caledonia, conducive to the development of mosquitoes.
“We have to be extremely vigilant if we don’t want the epidemic to explode and tragedies like the death of this young woman to happen again”, told AFP Jean-Paul Grangeon, medical inspector at the Department of Social and Health Affairs.
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