Nepal is reeling from an unprecedented dengue outbreak
Climate change may be making the Himalayan nation hospitable to disease-carrying mosquitoes
![mosquito fumigation](https://i0.wp.com/www.sciencenews.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/093019_gd_nepal-dengue_feat.jpg?fit=1030%2C574&ssl=1)
As Nepal records at least 9,000 cases of dengue amid an unprecedented outbreak of the disease, workers are fumigating areas of Kathmandu against the mosquitoes that carry the disease.
SOPA Images Limited/Alamy Stock Photo
KATHMANDU, Nepal — When mosquito season brought past dengue outbreaks to regions across the Asian tropics, Nepal hardly had to worry. The high-altitude Himalayan country was typically too chilly for the disease-carrying insects to live. But with climate change opening new paths for the viral disease, Nepal is now reeling from an unprecedented outbreak.
At least 9,000 people — from 65 of Nepal’s 77 districts — have been diagnosed with dengue since August, including six patients who have died, according to government health data.
“We have never had an outbreak like this before,” says Dr. Basu Dev Pandey, director of the Sukraraj Tropical and Infectious Diseases Hospital in the nation’s capital, Kathmandu. With dozens of people lined up for blood testing on September 26 at the nearby fever clinic, set up this year to handle the outbreak, Pandey continues: “People are afraid.”
![fever clinic Nepal](https://i0.wp.com/www.sciencenews.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/093019_gd_nepal-dengue_inline1_1030.jpg?resize=1040%2C580&ssl=1)
Dengue is carried by the Aedes aegypti and A. albopictus mosquitoes, and has long been associated with warmer, low-lying tropical climates where the insects thrive. But for years, researchers have warned that dengue and other mosquito-borne illnesses would spread into new regions, as climate change brings warmer temperatures and alters rainfall patterns so that cooler regions become more hospitable for mosquitoes (SN: 9/15/11).
Nepal is proving to be a real-world example of this change. The country had its first-ever dengue outbreak in 2006, but only a handful of people were affected that year from lowland districts along the southern border with India.