Dozens of feverish infusion patients lie lined up on beds in a large room. Families massage their suffering loved one’s arms and legs at the bedside to ease their pain. “I have been sick for more than ten days”Mehdi Hassan articulates laboriously on Monday, November 27th, before he goes back to bed, affected by the dengue virus like the others.

This tuk-tuk driver from a village around a hundred kilometers from Dhaka was admitted to Mugda Medical College and Hospital, a public facility in the Bangladeshi capital, two days ago. There is no treatment for dengue fever and only the most severe cases require hospitalization. This virus, transmitted to humans by infected mosquitoes, causes high fever, headaches, nausea, vomiting, but also severe muscle and joint pain and can even lead to the patient’s death.

Never before has Bangladesh seen such an explosion in cases. Between 1^um January and 1st^um According to official data, more than 310,000 people have been infected with the virus and 1,628 have died as of December 2023. This is the deadliest year since the country’s first dengue outbreak in 2000. The current death toll is already more than five times higher than last year, when the country recorded 281 deaths related to the virus.

“Many of them didn’t survive.”

“This year we are again dealing with a real dengue epidemic, even if the government has not officially declared it as such.”says Manjur Ahmed Chowdhury, who heads the Center for Governance Studies, a think tank based in Bangladesh. “We also know that for every officially recorded case, there are twenty more cases where this is not the case, so we estimate that the numbers are actually twenty times higher.”continues this entomologist.

“At the height of the crisis we were treating thousands of patients and it was difficult for us to ensure adequate follow-up care, many of whom did not survive.”, confirms Madhuri Roy, who was transferred from another facility at the beginning of the monsoon season specifically to deal with dengue cases in Mudga, whose infrastructure is extremely outdated and where everything seems to be lacking – including nursing staff. In July and August the influx of dengue patients was so great that the 10th^e and 11^e Land was requisitioned for them. Hospitals were on the verge of an explosion. “The beds were full, patients were sitting on the floor, even on the balconies and in front of the elevator entrances”the doctor remembers.

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