2024-01-20 21:44:00
After 3 years without any recorded cases, type 2 dengue fever reappeared last December in Papeete, with two indigenous cases (Photo credit: TNTV)
Zika, chikungunya, dengue… No hospitalizations linked to one of these viruses transmitted by mosquitoes have been recorded in 2023. However, the viruses have not disappeared from fenua: following 3 years without any recorded cases, dengue type 2 reappeared last December in Papeete, with two indigenous cases.
« Dengue comes back regularly. The cases we had were not imported, the people were infected here, recalls Dr Henri-Pierre Mallet, head of the Health Monitoring Office and the Arass Health Observatory. This means that we risk having an epidemic, more or less strong. We must expect a resurgence of this disease.”
If prevention is logically indicated, new tools to combat these viruses are beginning to emerge, such as sterile male mosquitoes bred for 10 years by the Louis Malardé Institute. A biological control which has made it possible to reduce mosquito populations on the Tetiaroa atoll and which should be applied on a larger scale. “ We are going to have a new test on Tahiti, with mosquitoes which will sterilize the population. To expand it to an entire country, it will be more complicated, but it is not unthinkable » , says Dr Mallet.
Other means of protection, vaccines. With climate change pushing virus-carrying mosquitoes towards Europe, pharmaceutical laboratories have already understood the benefit of launching into the manufacture of serums. A hope to be taken with a grain of salt, but which is nevertheless not utopian. “ We have a serum marketed in certain countries, but not in France, which might be interesting. There remains the problem of the price of the vaccine, the hindsight necessary to estimate its effectiveness, and knowing how to use it. Are we vaccinating the entire population? A part ? These are leads that we can hope to have soon » , concludes Dr Mallet.
This race for solutions to combat mosquitoes has only just begun since, according to the WHO, these diseases represent a major threat to the entire world.
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