A member of a health brigade fumigates a house against the dengue virus at a shanty town on the hills of San Juan de Lurigancho district, Lima on May 11, 2023/AFPPix: Health personnel in protective suits are going door to door in Peru, fumigating homes to eradicate mosquitos spreading the dengue-causing virus that has already killed 79 people in the country this year.
The campaign started two weeks ago, with dozens of fumigators deployed in 20 of Peru’s 25 departments, including the capital, with a potent insecticide. “Dengue is killing many people. First it was Covid, we saved ourselves from Covid, now comes dengue,“ said one of them, 26-year-old merchant Leslie Llontop.
In the first 10 weeks this year, said a recent PAHO report, Peru reported the third-highest number of severe dengue cases in the Americas, after Colombia and Brazil.In February, Peru declared a health emergency in several departments after recording a 72-percent increase in dengue cases from the same period in 2022.