Dengue Epidemic hits Bolivia!

This year has been one of the worse out-breaks of dengue in Bolivia in years! There have been over 50,000 "reported" cases of dengue and probably just as many unreported cases. For those of you that are not familiar with the illness, it is spread by mosquito, and is very similar to malaria. There are five different varieties of the disease with hemorrhagic dengue the most serious since it usually ends with death of the individual. Dengue "classical" is the most common and generally is milder than the other four varieties. Symptoms include high fevers, aches, pains, nausea, malaise, anorexia, hallucinations, rashes, and stomach ache. The illness usually runs its course within about ten days. Once you have had dengue you generally receive a life long immunity to "that variety" of the disease. You can still contract one of the other varieties.
This past Saturday the city of Santa Cruz declared a "dengue paro." A "paro" is the Bolivian word for "strike" which generally means that no one goes anywhere, but rather stays at their home. This "paro" was designed for everyone to stay at home and clean up their yards, getting rid of waste and standing water.
On Saturday morning someone representing the city came to our door and gave us all the instructions as to what must be done to clean up our yard for the paro. Everyone was instructed to place their garbage, such as old mattresses, refrigerators, pop bottles, car tires, leaves, etc. on one of the corners of their block and someone would be by to pick everything up. We always keep our grounds clean so we really did not need to do anything. We did put a couple of old tires outside and an old toilet bowl. Later in the day someone came by to inspect our property. That was kind of a joke because all they did was ask us if we had cleaned up our yard. Of course the answer was yes. Below, the picture of the giant mosquito with a red line through it was place on our exterior gate for everyone to see that we had passed inspection. Here is the garbage that made its way to our corner by all the neighbors.....................

By Monday morning scavengers had already gone through our garbage and made off with everything of any value.

Here is a picture taken from the local paper of one of the garbage heaps. There is so much garbage it will take weeks for the city to get everything hauled away! And yesterday we received torrential rains which made matters worse. If there was any mosquito larva in the garbage the rains only helped them in their growth cycle.

As you can see below, this is something that was in the local paper describing what took place.

Below you will see just one of many pictures of people with their families waiting for medical care.

Below is a picture of someone who was not as fortunate. They died from the dengue. Here is a typical picture of a wake. Usually when someone dies in Bolivia they must bury them within 24 hours because there are no embombing facilities. Family is notified of a death and they come together and prep the body and then sit together the remainder 16 or so hours until they take the body to the cemetery for burial. Bodies are usually entombed and not buried under ground.

Below is a picture of a women with her sick child. They ran out of hospital space and the child is on a gurney in a hallway of the hospital.