Vietnam raises dengue alert, death toll hits 27

HANOI (Reuters) - Vietnam's health minister has raised concerns about a spreading dengue outbreak, citing 27 deaths this year and a jump in the number of cases, a newspaper reported on Saturday.

The mosquito-borne disease has struck a number of Southeast Asia countries this year, including Cambodia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand, due to warmer weather and rising rainfall.

Some experts have said 2007 may be the worst year on record.

"The risk of the dengue epidemic outbreak in southern and central provinces is very high in the coming time," Health Minister Tran Thi Trung Chien told the Thanh Nien (Young People) newspaper.

She said the focus to fight dengue was to eliminate areas where mosquitos breed.

The Health Ministry has also sought government approval to include dengue prevention in a national programme that targets social, dangerous diseases along with HIV/AIDS for the period until 2010, Chien said.

There is no treatment for dengue, which is transmitted by the Aedes aegypti mosquito.

The infection rate has accelerated in recent years due to increasing urbanisation and travel or migration within the region, experts say.

Dengue infected 24,255 Vietnamese in the first half of this year, up 23 percent from a year earlier, 19,000 of them live in southern provinces, Chien said.

The tropical viral fever has killed 27 people, compared with 17 deaths from the fever in the first half of 2006.

Last month Cambodia appealed for international help to fight dengue, which has killed more children early in this year's wet season than in all of the last.