Peru health minister resigns over dengue crisis

LIMA (AFP): Peru’s health minister resigned Thursday following criticism over her handling of a dengue crisis that has left at least 248 people dead and around 147,000 infected, a presidential statement said.

Peruvian President Dina Boluarte accepted Rosa Gutierrez’s resignation and vowed to “redouble all efforts to bring quality health care” to all citizens, according to a post on the Peruvian presidency’s Twitter account.

Gutierrez announced her departure during a congressional meeting in which she was questioned over her management of the dengue outbreak.

Several parties had called for her resignation after she attributed the increase in dengue cases to high temperatures and rains in the first quarter of the year.

Peru has the second-highest dengue mortality rate in Latin America after Brazil, according to the Pan American Health Organization, with cases overwhelming hospitals in the north of the country this year.

Dengue is a disease endemic to tropical areas that causes high fevers, headaches, nausea, vomiting, muscle pain and, in the most serious cases, haemorrhages that can lead to death.

It was first detected in Peru in 1984 and has since become endemic.

The World Health Organization warned in April that dengue and other diseases caused by mosquito-borne viruses are spreading much further and farther under the effect of climate change.