Venezuelan health officials organised a major one day campaign against dengue on 31 August. “D Day: taking away the mosquito's water” brought communities together to identify and destroy sites that could potentially harbour the larvae of the mosquito that spreads dengue virus.
Aedes aegypti generally breeds in containers filled with water, such as tanks, discarded cans, and bottles and old tyres. Venezuela's director of environmental and sanitary health, Dr Francisco Armada, said the D Day publicity was a way of “freshening up” the ministry's campaign against dengue, as well as raising public awareness about the virus.
“In the past officials used to go up to the shanty towns once a year to fumigate, but no one ever really explained to the residents what we were doing. Now we want to get everyone involved,” said Dr Armada.
The new campaign focuses on recognising potential breeding sites and taking preventive action—a change of emphasis for Venezuela's health authorities. Previous publicity campaigns focused on educating Venezuelans to recognise the symptoms of dengue, while health officials relied on fumigation programmes to limit the numbers of adult mosquitoes.
But these campaigns largely failed to reduce the incidence of dengue, and Dr Armada said the ministry now recognised that its previous strategy “had not been particularly effective.” By early August Venezuela had registered 27098 cases of dengue, including 2325 cases of dengue haemorrhagic disease, although only one case was fatal.
Venezuela's overall annual incidence (81.5 reported cases per 100000 people) is lower than that of neighbouring Brazil or Colombia, but it is significantly worse than most other countries in the Americas and the Caribbean. Dr Armada attributes this to a combination of environmental and political factors. He believes previous campaigns failed in part because they did not address the fact that most victims of dengue are among the country's poorest people, who frequently lack running water and sanitation services.