ET: First of all, could you give us an idea of the scale of the problem? What is dengue fever, how dangerous is it, and where does it occur? Dr Quillon Harpham: Dengue fever is a serious problem. It's a viral disease. It's spread by aedes mosquitoes; aedes mosquitoes are the small ones - so not the same mosquitoes that spread malaria, for example. Dengue gives you very severe flulike symptoms. So it gives us severe headaches, very high fever, nausea, vomiting and aching all over your body - it is a very unpleasant disease to catch indeed. And one thing that makes it difficult to manage is that there are four distinct serotypes, or strains, of the disease. They're closely related, but they're different. And so the first time you catch dengue fever, you will be immune to the serotype that you catch, but the second infection will be a different serotype and that can lead to a much more severe fever, which has a 2.5 per cent mortality rate. So it's more severe the second time and you're more likely to die from it.
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