day awareness campaign based in Al-Balad district was launched by the Jeddah Municipality and the Ministry of Health to educate the public about dengue fever. “The festival which is taking place in the center of Jeddah aims to increase awareness about the causes and ways to prevent becoming infected,” said Abdulghafor Azhari, Hygiene and Environment Undersecretary for the Jeddah Municipality. “The festival comes within the joint efforts between the Municipality and the Health Ministry to put an end to dengue fever.” He said Al-Balad district was selected because it has an increased incidence of dengue fever compared to other districts. “The organizers will distribute more than 5,000 brochures in six languages with CD's and some gifts for visitors,” Azhari said. In January 2008 health officials in Jeddah registered 16 confirmed cases of dengue fever and 342 cases of the illness were reported nation-wide last year, according to a source at the Health Affairs Administration in Jeddah. In 2006, dengue fever killed 1,314 people. No dengue deaths were reported in 2007, said Nabeel Abu Khutwah, an environmental science specialist at King Abdul Aziz University and consultant to the Jeddah Mayoralty. “The number of cases has decreased this year compared to last year when the Health Ministry reported 70 to 80 cases monthly.Last February, MOH also detected four cases in Jizan while Makkah was reported free of the disease,” Al-Zahrani said. “The sewage lake located about 20 km east of Briman Bridge is the reason – it is preventing efforts to control the spread of the disease,” he added. Dengue fever is spread through mosquitoes infected with the virus. Mosquitoes use pools of standing water to lay their eggs. Dengue dever cases tend to increase when there is an increase in rainfall. Dengue fever is believed to be the most dangerous mosquito-borne disease after malaria with 40 million dengue fever cases reported each year. More than 16,000 people died in 2007 from dengue fever. __
