Dengue Fever in Mainland China

Dengue is an acute emerging infectious disease transmitted by Aedes mosquitoes and has become a serious global public health problem. In mainland China, a number of large dengue outbreaks with serious consequences have been reported as early as 1978. In the three decades from 1978 to 2008, a total of 655,324 cases were reported, resulting in 610 deaths. Since the 1990s, dengue epidemics have spread gradually from Guangdong, Hainan, and Guangxi provinces in the southern coastal regions to the relatively northern and western regions including Fujian, Zhejiang, and Yunnan provinces. As the major transmission vectors of dengue viruses, the biological behavior and vectorial capacity of Aedes mosquitoes have undergone significant changes in the last two decades in mainland China, most likely the result of urbanization and global climate changes. In this review, we summarize the geographic and temporal distributions, the serotype and genotype distributions of dengue viruses in mainland China, and analyze the current status of surveillance and control of vectors for dengue transmission.