Via The New York Times: Climate Change, Crime and Political Chaos: A Deadly Mix in Honduras Dengue Epidemic. Excerpt:
CHOLOMA, Honduras — More than 400 people died this year as one of the worst dengue epidemics on record swept through Central America — a type of outbreak that some scientists and public health officials are warning is likely to become more frequent and more widespread because of climate change.
But while climate change is threatening to increase the spread of dengue worldwide by expanding the range of the mosquitoes that carry the virus, the disease has already found an especially fertile breeding ground in Honduras, for reasons that go beyond the environment.
In Honduras, which accounted for more than 40 percent of the dengue deaths in Central America this year, according to the Pan American Health Organization, the effects of climate change have been compounded by government dysfunction, political tumult and public apathy.
Dengue has hit the country hard. This year, it had more than 107,000 cases of the viral disease — more than 13 times the number recorded last year — and at least 175 deaths. In 2018, only three people in Honduras died from the disease, according to the Pan American Health Organization.
Honduras’s notorious criminality has worsened matters, too, as public health teams, already stretched thin by budget cuts and a lack of trained personnel, have been blocked by gangs from entering some of the most severely afflicted neighborhoods to educate residents and fumigate against mosquito infestations.
Dengue is transmitted to humans by a type of mosquito called Aedes, which thrives in urban areas of the world’s tropical and subtropical regions. Tens of millions of cases occur each year in more than 100 countries, and symptoms may include fever, internal bleeding and shock. Inadequately treated, the illness can quickly kill.
In Honduras, health officials trace the start of the current epidemic to the fall of 2018. The number of incidents then rose sharply during the first half of 2019, hitting a peak this summer before falling off as the year ended. A nationwide health emergency declared in July by the administration of President Juan Orlando Hernández remains in effect.
The outbreak struck during a time of political turbulence in Honduras, with violent street protests against Mr. Hernández and calls for his ouster. Some of the protests have been driven by fears the government planned to privatize the health and education sectors.
The nation also suffers from high murder rates and widespread poverty, which have combined to drive tens of thousands of Hondurans in recent years to emigrate, with many trying to make it to the United States.
The dengue outbreak has met little resistance from a public health system gutted by budget cuts and pervasive corruption, analysts and officials said.
“It’s a collapsed system, an inefficient system,” said Ismael Zepeda, an economist with Fosdeh, a research group in Tegucigalpa, the capital.
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