Dengue

I. Dengue : Dengue fever is a painful, debilitating vector-borne disease caused by any one of four closely related dengue viruses. It is transmitted through the bite of the female Aedes mosquito, which picks up the virus when it bites and sucks the blood of a person already suffering from dengue, and then passes the virus on when it bites someone else. Dengue cannot spread directly from one person to another without this mosquito vector.

Because dengue is transmitted by a mosquito vector in the same way as malaria and lymphatic filariasis, the same general vector-control principles apply to preventing it: eliminating mosquito breeding sites (removing stagnant water, since Aedes typically breeds in small collections of clean, standing water around homes), using mosquito nets and insect repellents to avoid bites, and community-level insecticide spraying during outbreaks.