An outbreak of dengue fever in Brazil's tourist mecca of Rio de Janeiro has prompted the authorities to step up prevention measures, fearing a repeat of a 2002 epidemic that killed more than 100 people, officials said on Wednesday. "We have flare-ups in two districts. It needs to be blocked urgently, because without such control we have a risk of having an epidemic again in Rio," Aloisio Ribeiro, head of Rio state government's Epidemiology Vigilance Center, told Reuters. Dengue, or Aedes Aegypti, is carried by mosquitoes and causes severe body pain, fever and headaches. Larvae breed in stagnant waters, in anywhere from abandoned swimming pools to flower pots and car tires left in the open air. State and municipal authorities will launch a task force on Thursday to combat the disease with vehicle-mounted insecticide sprayers and inspections of private homes and courtyards. Hundreds of workers will be sent to find and destroy larvae that breed in stagnant water. One of the affected districts is upscale oceanside Barra da Tijuca. Barra and neighboring Jacarepagua accounted for over 250 dengue cases out of 328 registered in Rio last month, and there were similar rates in January. December's total number of cases was three times higher than a year earlier. Rio is preparing to receive hundreds of thousands of tourists for its famed annual Carnival in February.
