Epidemiological and Economic Burden of Dengue in Dhaka, Bangladesh
Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS) organized a seminar as part of the organization’s series of BIDS Fortnightly Seminar 2021-2022 on November 17, 2021 at 2:30 pm. Dr. Abdur Razzaque Sarker, Research Fellow of BIDS presented his research titled as “Epidemiological and Economic Burden of Dengue in Dhaka, Bangladesh”. This research Has been funded by the Health Economics Unit, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW). Dr. Binayak Sen, Director General of BIDS chaired the event. The seminar was conducted in a hybrid format.
This study aimed to estimate the epidemiological and economic burden of dengue in Dhaka in 2019 from a societal perspective. A cross-sectional study design was adopted for this study. A combination of three different surveys was conducted to address the study objectives; (i) a community-based household survey for the epidemiological burden of dengue in Dhaka city, (ii) the hospital-based dengue patients’ survey was conducted to estimate the economic burden of dengue at the household level, and (iii) a hospital survey was also conducted to capture the provider cost of dengue patients. A total of 1,176 households were surveyed from both Dhaka North City Corporation (DNCC) and Dhaka South City Corporation (DSCC) and a total of 302 hospitalized confirmed dengue patients were enrolled for the economic burden of dengue study.
The findings of this study acknowledged the substantial health and economic burden of dengue infection among Dhaka city dwellers, which underscores the urgent need for an effective national dengue prevention strategy to bring down the dengue prevalence and reduce the economic burden of households. Therefore, various community-based awareness program should be initiated and monitored to wipe out Ades mosquito completely. Various social protection schemes including ‘Shasthyo Surokhsha Karmasuchi (SSK)’ may be introduced in urban Dhaka for poor and vulnerable households to tackle the catastrophic health burden against dengue infections.
Senior Research Fellows of BIDS, namely, Dr. S.M. Zulfiqar Ali, Dr. Mohammad Yunus, Dr. Anwara Begum, Dr. Kazi Iqbal, Research Fellows of BIDS, Dr. Mohammad Mainul Hoque, Dr. Azreen Karim, Dr. Badrun Nessa Ahmed, Dr. Mohammad Harunur Rashid Bhuiyan, Mrs. Tahreen Tahrima Chowdhury, Research Associate, BIDS, Professor M Mozammel Haq, Mr. Md. Kamrul Bari, Deputy Executive Secretary, Research and Development Department, DCCI among other distinguished guests, spoke in the seminar.