The highest concentration of Dengue Fever cases has moved north with Hanoi as Vietnam’s hardest-hit area, after the Mekong Delta had accounted for 80-90 percent of all cases 1998-2007, said a health official.

Vietnam has historically recorded major jumps in the number of dengue cases every ten years, he said.

“Our country has recorded big dengue outbreaks in 1987, 1998 and now 2009,”

Only between 5-10 percent of local people have antibodies against dengue fever in the north, Nam said, compared to 70-85 percent in the south.

This, together with the Hanoi’s failure to kill mosquito larvae thoroughly, can explain dengue’s abnormal increase this year in Hanoi, according to the official, denying that a new strain of dengue virus was the cause of the outbreaks.

“At the moments scientific evidence has yet to prove a change in the virus strain.”

However, the health ministry is tracing the appearance of another mosquito-borne virus, Chikungunya, which is suspected of causing an illness with symptoms similar to dengue fever in many patients, Nam said.

The Chikungunya virus – Aedes albopictus – is familiar to Vietnamese health workers and can be killed, he said, advising people not to be too worried.

“No strange mosquito has been detected so far.”

Vaccines against dengue fever are now under experiment, Nam said, adding that new dengue tests that confirm finding in three days as opposed to the current five have been proposed.

Southern metro awaits dengue peak

While the number of dengue patients this year hasn’t increased much from last year in Ho Chi Minh City, experts said the peak had yet to come.

“The dengue fever outbreak hasn’t peaked, but will start increasing critically later this month,” said Nguyen Dac Tho, vice director of the HCMC Preventive Health Department.

Dr. Le Bich Lien, head of the Dengue Fever Department at the city’s Children’s Hospital No.1, also warned that the dengue attack would get stronger and last till December.

Since the beginning of the year, 1,720 people have been admitted to hospitals with dengue, according to official statistics from the local health sector.

Eight of them have died, double last year’s toll, the statistics showed.

In the meantime, hand-foot-and-mouth disease is also spreading in Ho Chi Minh City, local authorities said.Some 3,000 children in Vietnam caught the disease last year and at least 10 died.

Children Hospital No.1, for example, reported on Friday that 60 patients were under treatment for the disease, which is caused by the enterovirus 17, with fever, blisters, mouth ulcers and rashes.

Dr. Truong Huu Khanh from the hospital said nearly 90 percent of the children, mainly from other provinces, were admitted to the hospital in already serious condition.

“A difficulty at the moment is that people easily confuse influenza A (H1N1), dengue fever and hand-foot-and-mouth disease,” Khanh said.

Reported by Lien Chau – Thanh Tung