Natural disasters like storms, earthquakes and floods make news around the world, but health emergencies are silently affecting hundreds of millions of lives every year. The recent Ebola outbreak in Guinea—which the Red Cross is working to help contain—is a rare example of public health emergencies becoming global news. One of the most silent, and rapidly growing, health emergencies in the spread of dengue fever, a disease spread by mosquitos.
Over the past 50 years, dengue has spread from nine to more than one hundred countries, and cases have risen from 15,000 per year in the 1960s to 390 million today. More than 40 per cent of the world’s population is at risk from dengue, and half a million people, mainly children, need hospital care every year to be treated for it. Those who suffer most from dengue are already among the poorest and most vulnerable families, who live in areas with inadequate water supply or poor sanitation. These families have the fewest resources to seek medical care or overcome the temporary or permanent loss of an income earner.
The focus of this year’s World Health Day is vector-borne diseases—illnesses spread by mosquitoes, flies, tucks and bugs. The Red Cross is working in at-risk communities across the world, teaching families how to protect themselves from these deadly diseases. Watch the video below to see the Peruvian Red Cross in action, working to educate families and contain the spread of dengue.