Official Position Paper

Country: The Arab Republic of Egypt

Committee: World Health Organization
Topic: Dengue: prevention and care
Delegate: Diego Lopez

Dengue is a dangerous disease that has been around us for hundreds of years and still threatens
us to this day, taking thousands of lives around the world each year. This is no exception in the
Republic of Egypt. Since 1799 this republic has been dealing with dengue until the cases
decreased in 1940. Unfortunately, there have been some recent outbreaks of this disease in 2016
and 2017. One study in upper Egypt, 2016, showed that around one-third of the recruited 51
suspects of having dengue and 1800 mosquitoes had this illness.

The response of Egypt to these outbreaks was more focused on prevention, conducting studies
and keeping suspects in hospitals due to the lack of effective vaccines. In 1940 the Aedes
Aegypti mosquitoes were eradicated with the help of dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT). In
2017, an outbreak of an unknown disease was later confirmed as dengue, the patients were kept
in a hospital and then released. These methods have been effective but the war against dengue is
not over yet.

The focus will be on prevention, studying how many are infected and the areas where it spreads
more and presenting the brand new B.OB.I campaign to raise awareness to the population so
they can take the best preventive, measures. With this, a solid plan can be made to minimize the
spread of the sickness as much as possible so it can be eradicated completely without risks of
future outbreaks.
References:

1. Gaber, M., Ahmad, A. A., El-Kady, A. M., Tolba, M., Suzuki, Y., Mohammed, S., &
Elossily, N. A. (2022). Dengue fever as a reemerging disease in upper Egypt: Diagnosis,
vector surveillance and genetic diversity using RT-LAMP assay. PLOS ONE, 17(5),
e0265760. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0265760
2. Dengue fever in Qena - Egypt - Al-Ahram Weekly. (n.d.). Ahram Online.
https://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/50/1201/505041/AlAhram-Weekly/Egypt/Den
gue-fever-in-Qena.aspx