A Dispatch From Argentina’s Dengue Epidemic

Hi, it’s Patrick in Buenos Aires. Latin America has recently been ravaged by dengue. I experienced the impact of the epidemic firsthand. But before we get to that …

My breath suspended before translating the doctor’s diagnosis. After hours at a packed hospital in Buenos Aires, my parents and I finally got in front of an emergency room medic with the test results. She breezed through all the numbers as I followed her sentence by sentence, Spanish to English.

My dad, two months after his 70th birthday, looked at me to confirm he heard right.

“You’re positive for dengue, Dad,” I translated. My dad had become one of millions of people in Latin America who have contracted dengue in recent months.

Dengue is a mosquito-borne illness. Many people who get it don’t even show any symptoms, but for those those who do, it can sometimes be severe, or even fatal. Right now Argentina is suffering its worst dengue season on record. The government has reported more than 233,000 cases of dengue so far this year — about eight times the number of cases reported during the same period last year — and 161 deaths. Latin America as a whole, concentrated in Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay, has registered 4.5 million cases, reports the Pan American Health Organization.

It wasn’t what my parents had in mind when they retired last year, left Connecticut and chose to move to Argentina for a year to spend more time with me in this new chapter of their lives. For several days, dengue crushed my dad physically. His vertigo became so bad he needed to hold both his arms against the hallway walls of his apartment to reach the bathroom. Dizziness, fatigue and indigestion endured for more than a week. He didn’t eat for a few days and felt dehydrated no matter how much water and Gatorade he drank. My mom and I relayed the news to all our family back home and translated doctors’ opinions while caring for him. We also researched possible dengue vaccines. While Argentina so far has approved Qdenga vaccine from Japan-based Takeda Pharmaceutical to prevent dengue, at the hospital doctors told us they didn’t yet recommend it for older adults.

Even once the physical symptoms lifted in week two, he developed a mental fog, forgetting names, places and directions. A lifelong basketball fan, he quizzed me during March Madness about basic rules or who was playing. It revived our family trauma from years ago when we witnessed my late grandmother’s descent into dementia.

Thankfully my dad fully recovered after two and a half weeks. He’s in good spirits today, clear-minded and enjoying basketball again without having to double-check the rules. But the scars are still there: We’re constantly on high alert for mosquitoes. Argentina’s economic crisis collided with dengue as the country ran out of bug spray, creating surging prices and empty shelves at supermarkets. The government is importing more repellent from Poland, but one canister of insect repellent on the e-commerce website MercadoLibre still goes for nearly $20, more than double the price on Amazon. Besides repellent shipments and a long list of prevention tips, President Javier Milei’s government isn’t taking many other steps to combat the virus as he implements his austere, “there’s no money” campaign message.

Before my brother and his wife came to visit last week, we sent one big request: “Bring Bug Spray.” — Patrick Gillespie