Argentina rules out dengue vaccination – 03/19/2024 – Balance and Health

The Argentine government ruled out, this Monday (18), including the dengue vaccine in the national system that would make it free and mandatory, and questioned its effectiveness, at a time when the country reaches a record of 79 deaths in eight months due to the illness.

“Immunity is obtained over time, therefore, by vaccinating now, this immunity will only be obtained in four months, when the mosquito is no longer an inconvenience, and the effectiveness is not proven,” said the spokesperson president, Manuel Adorni, in an interview with journalists.

He said the decision to include it in the calendar is “not on the agenda”, although it could change in the future.

Between July last year and March “79 cases of deaths due to dengue were registered in the National Health Surveillance System, 69 of them in the year 2024”, the Ministry of Health reported over the weekend. It also specified that 22 of them occurred in the last week.

So far in 2024, more than 102 thousand cases of dengue fever have been reported in Argentina, which represents 86% of the 120 thousand registered cases, another record.

Argentine President Javier Milei said on Sunday in an interview that the dengue crisis is “part of the neglect of Kirchnerism”, referring to the previous government, which he accused of “not having had a good campaign a year ago”.

Qdenga or TAK-003, a vaccine from the Japanese laboratory Takeda against this mosquito-transmitted virus Aedes Aegypti, is available in Argentina for around 70,000 pesos (R$412) per dose. The minimum wage in the country is 202,800 pesos (R$1,196).

Eduardo López, an infectious disease doctor at the Buenos Aires Children’s Hospital, countered Adorni. “Studies show that vaccines are safe and effective,” he declared on channel C5N.

Virologist Andrea Gamarnik, specialized in the dengue virus and researcher at the Conicet institute, reported on the social network X that Argentina is facing “the worst dengue epidemic in history”, but that they are not “letting them work” because, in her opinion, the government is dismantling the scientific system.