Mosquito-borne diseases in northern and southern India have left ordinarily overworked hospitals inundated with patients Wednesday, and officials tallied at least 87 people who had lost their lives to the outbreak.

There are 35 people, including 18 medical staff, who caught the disease at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences known as the country's premier public hospital. An improvised ward was set up in a hallway to handle hundreds of dengue fever patients.

In one area with highest number of cases, Alappuzha, some 40,000 people were showing symptoms of the infection and thousands had been hospitalized.


The outbreak of dengue came after the annual monsoon season finished up across much of the country, leaving behind standing water where the mosquitoes breed. New Delhi is filled with these pools and on Monday thousands of health workers went door to door spraying pesticides to try to prevent the disease's reach.

New Delhi Health Minister Yoganand Shastri held an emergency meeting with top hospital administrators asking that they take strict action to battle the spread of the dangerous disease.

An awareness campaign on preventing the spread of the disease will be intensified.

About Dengue:

Dengue fever begins with a sudden onset of fever, severe headache, joint and muscle pains and a rash. It is sometimes referred to as `break-bone fever' or `bone crusher disease'. The dengue rash is typically bright red, appearing first on the lower limbs and chest, eventually spreading to cover most of the body. Other symptoms include abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea. Dengue fever lasts about one week, with a smaller crest of fever at the trailing end of the fever also called a biphasic pattern.

Epidemic dengue has become the second most harmful mosquito-borne disease affecting humans behind malaria. More and more common since the 1980s there have been around 40 million cases of dengue fever and several hundred thousand cases of dengue hemorrhagic fever each year.

Currently there is no available vaccine for the dengue virus. However, one of the many ongoing vaccine development programs is the Pediatric Dengue Vaccine Initiative (PDVI) which was set up in 2003 with the goal of developing a dengue vaccine that is accessible to poor children in endemic countries. Thai researchers are in phase III testing and have planned to test a vaccine on 3,000-5,000 human volunteers within the next three years after having successfully conducted tests on animals and a small group of human volunteers.

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