A Dengue Epidemic Strikes Tamaulipas
La Frontera NorteSur, September 14, 2005

Health officials in the Hurricane Katrina disaster zone worry about outbreaks of so-called Third World illnesses like mosquito-borne dengue fever. But in Tampaulipas state on the Mexico-US border, weather and poverty-driven conditions are already proving fertile ground for a dengue epidemic whose true dimensions are the subject of growing debate.

In Matamoros across the border from Brownsville, Texas, Tamaulipas state health official Doctor Victor Garcia Fuentes reported almost 200 cases of dengue fever in the city at the beginning of the week. Contending the number of cases could double in the next few days if sanitary precautions aren't taken, Dr. Garcia said 110 cases represented the common form of dengue fever and 72 additional ones the more serious dengue hemorrhagic fever, which can be fatal. He identified women as constituting the greatest number of victims from the epidemic.

Dengue fever symptoms include high fever, headaches, bone and eye soreness, and skin rashes. Common pain killers containing acetaminophen are the preferred method of relieving dengue-caused symptoms. City officials in neighboring Brownsville are reportedly cooperating with their Matamoros counterparts in an anti- dengue campaign.

Conflicting reports abound about the true number of dengue victims in Tamaulipas. By the first week of September, the Tamaulipas State Health Department reported more than 1,750 people statewide had been afflicted with dengue fever during the previous three months. Since victims who see private doctors aren't counted by the health authorities, other estimates calculate minimally that 2,000 people have fallen ill. One version estimated as many as 700 people in Matamoros alone could have been infected.

Rodolfo Torre Cantu, the Tamaulipas state health secretary, blamed the continued wet weather after the passage of Hurricane Emily and tropical storm Gert this summer for the dengue problem. The illness is known to spread in areas where mosquito-attracting stagnant pools of water stand and trash collects, circumstances common in poor Mexican neighborhoods known as colonias.

The seriousness of the epidemic is perhaps gauged by comparing the number of dengue fever cases in northern Tamaulipas state with those in Oaxaca and Guerrero states, southern states with higher poverty rates where dengue is recurring. Since the beginning of the year, nearly 200 cases have been reported in Oaxaca and at least 466 in Guerrero. This year's toll in Guerrero surpasses the number counted for all of 2004.

According to the US-based Centers for Disease Control, dengue eradication campaigns had largely controlled outbreaks in the hemisphere by the middle of the last century. Dengue fever began to rise again after the 1970s when controls were relaxed, afflicting 250,000 people in the Americas in 1995.

Tamaulipas state officials insist the current problem is under control in the border cities of Matamoros and Reynosa and municipalities to south, but some dispute the contention. Xochitl Rangel Vera, a neighborhood leader from Altamira, Tamaulipas, charged the state health department with hiding dengue-induced deaths. Rangel said at least ten people have died in low-income neighborhoods in her area of southern Tamaulipas.

The epidemic is taxing the health system. Extra beds, for instance, were put in the hallways of Matamoros' Alfredo Pumarejo General Hospital to accommodate patients. Urbano Pizarro, the director of the Mexican Social Security Institute in Matamoros, said the overload on existing facilities is such that patients are being sent to a hospital in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon. In Ciudad Madero, a gymnasium owned by the oil workers' union is being converted into a make-shift clinic to handle the overflow of sick people.

Criticism is being launched against the Tamaulipas state health system, alleging the authorities have been slow to control the epidemic. Enrique Garza, the chief of the state sanitary district in Matamoros, acknowledged that only about 80 of 480 vulnerable neighborhoods in the border municipality have been fumigated for mosquitoes, blaming the slow pace on rain-soaked, 'impassable' roads impeding the moving of fumigation equipment.

A dengue debate reverberated this week in the halls of the Tamaulipas state congress where the president of the state lawmaking body's health commission, Hector Lopez Gonzalez, publicly supported the health department's response and urged the issue not be blown out of proportion or politicized. State legislator Aida Acuna Cruz called on more citizen participation to stem the health threat. Under current state law, owners of empty lots are generally responsible for cleaning their properties of debris that could attract mosquito carriers.