No fewer than 31 children, 145 adults have died of dengue, a mosquito-borne fever, according to the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS).
Wednesday was the deadliest day when 19 people died of the disease, which has seen nearly 33,000 hospitalizations this year, says the DGHS data.
Bangladesh is grappling with a deadly dengue outbreak as heavy monsoon rains in the country cause widespread infections and fill hospitals.
Health experts in the South Asian nation of 170 million people say the disease has already reached an “epidemic” proportion, even though the government has not officially declared one.
This rate is a five-year high of 0.53 per cent, compared with 0.45 per cent last year when a record 281 people died of dengue in Bangladesh.
DGHS says 115 of the 176 deaths this year happened in the first 23 days of July. There were only 29 deaths last year in the same period.
Experts warn the situation could get worse in the coming days as both dengue hospitalisation and deaths in Bangladesh usually reach a peak in August and September.
“I think the outbreak of dengue this year has the same impact on people as it did in 2019, if not more,” ANM Nuruzzaman, physician and public health expert, told Al Jazeera.
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He was referring to the year which saw more than a million hospitalisations – the highest ever in the country – and 179 deaths. Many in Bangladesh still call 2019 the “year of dengue”.
“The government should declare [this year] as an epidemic as well and take proper measures to stop the spread. Otherwise, it will get worse,” Nuruzzaman said.
On 16 July, the Bangladesh Medical Association, the apex body for the country’s doctors, also urged the government to declare the dengue outbreak a “public health emergency”.
DGHS Director General Dr Abul Bashar Mohammad Khurshid Alam, however, thinks it is too early to declare dengue an epidemic in Bangladesh this year.
“For declaring it an epidemic, we need to justify some more criteria. I don’t think we have reached that point yet. Besides, there is no point in creating fear among people by declaring it an epidemic,” Alam told Al Jazeera.
But fear over the disease is spreading. Social media is flooded with accounts of suffering and deaths from all parts of the country, especially the sprawling capital of Dhaka.
Anwara Ferdousi, 76, went to see a doctor in Dhaka’s Square Hospital after she had a fever for two days.
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“I was asked to do a test for dengue, and I did that. When I went to the hospital after two days with the result, I couldn’t see the doctor as he himself was diagnosed with dengue. In fact, two more doctors from the same floor of the hospital caught the virus as well,” Ferdousi told Al Jazeera.
Parents are especially worried about their children. The DGHS data says a total of 7,240 children aged below 14 have already caught the disease.
“I have stopped sending my daughter to school as some of her classmates are already infected with dengue,” Rashed Jitu, a businessman in Dhaka’s Lalbagh area, told Al Jazeera.
“Her school has issued notice to every parent to put mosquito repellents on their children. It’s so scary.”