Current headlines may give the impression that the Middle East is the exclusive region facing fatalities. However, Sudan has recently reported a staggering 15,000 deaths due to genocide in a single town. This grim situation involves young men being deliberately shot in the legs by Arab militias to impede their mobility, while women and children are being brutally massacred. Despite the straightforward nature of the crisis, such as allegations that the UAE exports gold to fund ethnic violence, it remains largely overlooked, dragging millions of people into a worsening humanitarian disaster.
In a broader context of underreported tragedies, the Dengue virus has been significantly increasing a death toll worldwide, with children being particularly affected.
2019 research warned it would become a global threat that can’t be ignored, yet who really was talking about it during COVID?
Dengue causes the greatest human disease burden of any arbovirus, with an estimated 10,000 deaths and 100 million symptomatic infections per year in over 125 countries.
Le Monde hints even harder about the future with “worst dengue epidemic on record“, and predictions of death tolls dramatically increasing.
Never before has Bangladesh seen such an explosion of cases. Between January 1 and December 1, 2023, more than 310,000 people were infected with the virus and 1,628 died, according to official figures. This is the deadliest year since the country’s first dengue epidemic in 2000. The current death toll is already more than five times higher than last year, when the country recorded 281 virus-related deaths.
Pandemic Prevention Institute:
Severe dengue was rare in India before 1996, but India now bears the majority of the global dengue burden. Although dengue follows a general pattern associated with the monsoon season, the annual incidence of dengue in India has increased dramatically in the last ten years. […] Dengue cases have surged in other endemic areas, such as in Vietnam, where cases in 2022 are four times the number of cases reported in 2021.
From 2000 to 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) documented a ten-fold surge in reported cases worldwide increasing from 500,000 to 5.2 million. The year 2019 marked an unprecedented peak, with reported instances spreading across 129 countries.
France could see local dengue cases rise 50-fold by 2030 as temperatures rise. […] Airfinity forecasts, which consider temperature, precipitation, humidity, windspeed, and time of year, have predicted between approximately 290,000 – 390,000 cases of dengue in Peru by the end of the year compared to approximately 50,000 in 2021 and 73,000 in 2022.
European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC):
Autochthonous/non-travel associated dengue cases have been reported in Europe from Italy (82) France (43) and Spain (3).
Singapore National Environment Agency:
Fast rate of dengue transmission has been observed…
And ReliefWeb on Sudan:
The spread of dengue fever and the lack of food is gradually worsening the dire humanitarian and health crises faced by displaced people.