Over 2.5 billion people - more than 40 percent of the world's population - are now at risk from dengue, the World Health Organization said in an updated factsheet on Tuesday.
The factsheet explains that the disease is now endemic in more than 100 countries in Africa, the Americas, the Eastern Mediterranean, South-East Asia and the Western Pacific, whereas it was endemic in only nine countries in the 1970s.
South-East Asia and the Western Pacific regions are the most seriously affected.
WHO currently estimates there may be 50-100 million dengue infections worldwide every year.
An estimated half-a-million people with severe dengue require hospitalization each year, a large proportion of whom are children. About 2.5 percent of those affected die.
The only way to control the disease is to prevent the transmission of the dengue virus by combating vector mosquitoes, says the U.N. health agency.
Dengue is a mosquito-borne infection found in tropical and sub-tropical regions around the world. In recent years, transmission has increased predominantly in urban and semi-urban areas and has become a major international public health concern.
Cases across the Americas, South-East Asia and Western Pacific have exceeded 1.2 million in 2008 and over 2.2 million in 2010 (based on official data submitted by Member-States). Recently the number of reported cases has continued to increase. In 2010, 1.6 million cases of dengue were reported in the Americas alone, of which 49,000 cases were severe dengue.
Not only is the number of cases increasing as the disease spreads to new areas, but explosive outbreaks are occurring. The threat of a possible outbreak of dengue fever now exists in Europe and local transmission of dengue was reported for the first time in France and Croatia in 2010. Imported cases were detected in three other European countries.
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