Rising paediatric dengue cases in Kerala a cause for concern

Published 9 July 2026 · health

Public health experts have yet again flagged the importance of keeping the overall dengue burden in the community under check because paediatric dengue cases have

Public health experts have yet again flagged the importance of keeping the overall dengue burden in the community under check because paediatric dengue cases have been rising slowly. The death of a 14-year-old child due to dengue was reported from the capital last week. On an average, 100 or more cases are being reported daily in the State for the past one week, though the caseload is less than what was seen the previous year around the same time. While doctors have not reported complications of severe dengue or dengue deaths in children as was seen in the 2013 or 2017 outbreaks, an increase in paediatric cases can be quite concerning because epidemiologically, it is considered to be an indicator of the intensity and pattern of local transmission A rise in paediatric dengue infections has public health significance because it indicates that Aedes mosquitoes are actively transmitting dengue infection in residential neighbourhoods and that the infections could be closer home than one realises, points out R.

Aravind, Head of Infectious Diseases, Government Medical College Hospital, Thiruvananthapuram. Children spend most of their time in school and their homes and a rise in paediatric dengue infections is considered to be an indicator of increased household breeding of mosquitoes and that community transmission is well-established, public health experts say. In dengue epidemiology, the age at which dengue infection occurs is directly linked to how intensely the virus is circulating in a population. This concept, known as “force of infection” (FOI), measures the proportion of children getting primary dengue infection a year (expressed as infections per 100 susceptible persons per year). Risk of secondary infection Children living in regions like Kerala, where dengue is hyperendemic, get intense and early dengue exposure, increasing the risk of secondary infection, which could result in severe illness. About 90% of the dengue cases are sub-clinical and have little or no symptoms and are dismissed as viral fever.

Hence sero prevalence studies are used by researchers to track the the FOI. A Government of Kerala-World Health Organisation (WHO) collaborative study on the burden of dengue and the FOI among children in Kerala, published in The Lancet in 2023, which surveyed over 5,200 schoolchildren, reported a sero prevalence of 30.9% among 9-12-year-old children and 24.6% among 5-8-year-old children. In children in Thiruvananthapuram, the sero prevalence was 46.9%. The study estimated the FOI to be 3.3/100 persons a year, indicating that about 3.3% of children who have never had dengue before are newly getting infected every year in the State. About 90% of the children in the study with dengue antibodies did not know that they ever had a dengue infection. About 40% of the children with dengue antibodies had evidence of exposure to multiple dengue serotypes.