Reemergence of Dengue in Mauritius

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Volume 16, Number 4–April 2010
Dispatch
Reemergence of Dengue in Mauritius
Mohammad I. Issack, Vidula N. Pursem, Timothy M.S. Barkham, Lee-Ching Ng, Masafumi Inoue, and Shyam S. Manraj
Author affiliations: Central Health Laboratory, Candos Mauritius (M.I. Issack, V.N. Pursem, S.S. Manraj); Tan Tock Seng Hospital, Singapore (T.M.S. Barkham); Environmental Health Institute, Singapore (L.-C. Ng); and Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology, Singapore (M. Inoue)

Suggested citation for this article

Abstract
Dengue reemerged in Mauritius in 2009 after an absence of >30 years, and >200 cases were confirmed serologically. Molecular studies showed that the outbreak was caused by dengue virus type 2. Phylogenetic analysis of the envelope gene identified 2 clades of the virus. No case of hemorrhagic fever was recorded.

Mauritius is a tropical island nation of 1,865 km2 in the southwestern Indian Ocean, ≈2,000 km off the coast of eastern Africa. It has a population of 1.25 million, with ≈68% of Indian origin and 27% of predominantly African or mixed ancestry. It is classified by the World Bank as an upper-middle-income country. The economy is diversified; textiles, tourism, sugar cane, banking, and business process outsourcing are the main sectors. Most Mauritians have a sedentary lifestyle.

In 2008, a total of 930,000 visitors traveled to Mauritius for tourism and business; 98% arrived by air (1). They were mostly from western Europe (60.5%), Réunion island (10.3%), South Africa (9.1%), and India (4.7%).

Mauritius was, for many years, essentially free from indigenous dengue and chikungunya disease until 2005 and 2006 when outbreaks of chikungunya occurred, with Aedes albopictus mosquitoes as the vector (2). In the region, a well-documented epidemic of dengue fever caused by dengue virus type 2 (DENV-2) occurred on Réunion island in 1977–1978, and 2 outbreaks were caused by the same dengue serotype in the Seychelles in 1976–1977 and 1978–1979 (3,4). Although no record was made of laboratory-confirmed cases in the 1970s in Mauritius, a subsequent seroepidemiologic study suggests that cases of dengue also occurred in the country around that time, and it is reasonable to postulate that they were also caused by DENV-2 (5). Since then, apart from the occasional imported case, no evidence of dengue transmission has been reported for >30 years in Mauritius. However, dengue fever reemerged in the country in 2009, and we report on the laboratory investigation of the outbreak.

Suggested Citation for this Article
Issack MI, Pursem VN, Barkham TMS, Ng L-C, Inoue M, Manraj SS. Reemergence of dengue in Mauritius. Emerg Infect Dis [serial on the Internet]. 2010 Apr [date cited]. http://www.cdc.gov/EID/content/16/4/716.htm

DOI: 10.3201/eid1604.091582

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http://www.cdc.gov/eid/content/16/4/716.htm