Prime Minister Dean Barrow has dengue. The diagnosis was confirmed to him in a test performed this morning. He reports that he started feeling ill with an earache and fever from last week Thursday in Miami – where he was getting a check-up on his ailing back. Barrow returned home over the weekend and when the conditions did not abate – he went for a blood test which was positive for dengue. The doctor recommended bed rest until next week – which meant that today’s Cabinet meeting had to be cancelled and a House meeting which was set for Friday now has to be re-scheduled for the following week.
A dengue outbreak was confirmed in late July, concentrated mostly in the Cayo District but in August the infection rate tapered off. According to the Ministry of Health at the end of August infection rates were not abnormally high. The first 8 months of 2009 reported 397 clinically diagnosed cases of dengue, with 25 cases clinically diagnosed as dengue hemorrhagic fever.
