The dengue fever sit­u­a­tion in the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, where they have de­clared an epi­dem­ic, is worse than the rest of the re­gion. A re­port on BBC Caribbean.com said that across the Caribbean, health of­fi­cials were tal­ly­ing grow­ing num­bers of cas­es and ad­vis­ing res­i­dents to take pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sures. The re­port said of­fi­cials were wor­ried that mos­qui­to-borne dengue fever was reach­ing epi­dem­ic stages in the re­gion. The re­port not­ed that dozens of deaths had been re­port­ed and of­fi­cials said they were con­cerned it could get much worse as the rainy sea­son ad­vances.

The in­crease in cas­es is be­ing blamed on warm weath­er and an un­usu­al­ly ear­ly rainy sea­son which has pro­duced an ex­plo­sion of mos­qui­toes. At least 27 deaths have been re­port­ed in the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, the re­port said. And the num­ber of re­port­ed cas­es of the dis­ease there has been put by the coun­try's health min­is­ter, Bautista Ro­jas, at more than 5,000. In Puer­to Ri­co, of­fi­cials say the is­land is fac­ing what could be its worst dengue out­break in more than a decade. The au­thor­i­ties in San Juan say at least five peo­ple have died, and an­oth­er 6,300 cas­es of sus­pect­ed cas­es have been re­port­ed as of mid-Ju­ly.

The re­port al­so not­ed that T&T has had about two deaths so far and that lo­cal au­thor­i­ties were scram­bling to find beds for grow­ing num­bers of pa­tients. French Guiana, Guade­loupe and St Mar­tin have al­so reg­is­tered a high num­ber of dengue cas­es. Sta­tis­tics from the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion quot­ed by the As­so­ci­at­ed Press news agency sug­gest that more than16,700 cas­es of the dis­ease had been re­port­ed across the Caribbean through ear­ly June.

What is dengue fever?

This is an in­fec­tion from a type of virus known as a fla­vivirus, which is spread by mos­qui­toes. The ill­ness is found in both rur­al and sub­ur­ban en­vi­ron­ments. It is a ma­jor cause of ill­ness world­wide, caus­ing about 100 mil­lion episodes of fever­ish ill­ness a year.