World’s leading dengue: Some of the world’s leading experts on dengue, including those responding to the current dengue crisis and those developing vaccines and other countermeasures to fight the disease, will participate in an international dengue summit Aug. 7 through 9 at SUNY Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, N.Y.
The summit comes at a time when dengue cases have soared worldwide. “Global incidence of dengue in 2024 has been the highest on record for this calendar year,” according to CDC. More than 9 million cases of dengue have been reported in the Americas in the first half of 2024; that’s twice as high as the number of cases recorded in 2023.
Officials in the United States are growing more concerned that they may see a steady increase in cases. Already this year, Florida health officials have issued an alert in the Florida Keys after cases of dengue fever were confirmed to have been contracted locally, not through travel.
Dengue is a disease spread by infected Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus mosquitos that infect an estimated 400 million people every year. The severity of dengue can range anywhere from mild flu-like symptoms to life-threatening dengue hemorrhagic fever. Reports show that 20,000 people die from dengue virus infections annually.
Conference organizer and infectious disease expert Upstate’s Adam Waickman, PhD, hopes the conference will make significant strides to developing a “dengue endgame.”
“This conference will bring together experts from various fields—basic scientists, physicians, counter measure developers, policymakers and other stake holders—to discuss progress and strategies for achieving a true dengue endgame,” said Waickman, Upstate assistant professor of microbiology and immunology and laboratory director of Upstate’s Global Health Institute.
Leading the list of key presenters is virologist Scott Halstead, MD, considered one of the foremost authorities on dengue and other mosquito-borne diseases, who will deliver the keynote address “Dengue: confronting the pandemic” Aug. 7 at 3:40 p.m. Halstead began his research on dengue in the early 1960s. In 1967 he presented the first paper describing severe dengue hemorrhagic fever as the result of a second infection by one of the other four types of dengue. Newswise/SP