Peru has declared a health emergency across much of the country in response to a surge in dengue fever cases.
Roughly 32,000 people have caught the virus, which is spread by mosquitoes, in the first eight weeks of the year, while 32 deaths have been recorded, said Health Minister Cesar Vasquez.
Most of the cases recorded to date have been concentrated in the country’s north, notably Puira and La Libertad, where hospitals are already overwhelmed and struggling to treat patients.
In response to the surge, likely driven by the El Niño weather phenomenon, 20 out of 25 regions in Peru have declared a health emergency.
This will enable the national government to transfer funding faster to the affected regions, as well as transporting doctors and nurses to struggling health facilities.
Mr Vasquez said this year’s El Niño – the unusual warming of the eastern Pacific Ocean that disrupts seasonal weather patterns around the globe – had driven increasingly hotter and wetter environments across Peru, allowing mosquitos to survive, breed and further spread.
“The weather has created a perfect breeding ground for mosquitoes to reproduce more quickly and become a more frequent vector of the disease,” he said.
