Dengue outbreak shows dark side of Rio de Janeiro

But residents of this self-proclaimed city of wonders are worried and angry about a Third World affliction -- dengue fever, the tropical disease spreading in epidemic fashion here.

As of Friday, health officials reported that dengue had killed at least 87 people in the state of Rio de Janeiro this year and sickened more than 93,000. Most cases occurred here in the city, Brazil's principal tourist attraction. Children 15 and younger have been especially hard hit, accounting for almost half of the dead, officials said.

Dengue has become an annual scourge in a swath of tropical Brazil, but this year's epidemic seems likely to be Rio's deadliest in recent history.

Rather than blame the stripe-bellied Aedes aegypti mosquito that spreads the ailment, many Cariocas, as Rio residents are known, are lashing out at what they call a confused and belated government response. Critics say officials were slow to fumigate and take other action during the Southern Hemisphere summer, when heavy rains created optimum mosquito breeding grounds.

"This epidemic is purely the responsibility of local and national authorities," said Edna Rollin, 58, a history teacher who expressed the sentiment of many interviewed in the bustling Cinelandia plaza downtown. "They stopped fumigating in summer, and now we are paying the consequences."

Lawmakers have pointed fingers at each other in a blame game reminiscent of what happened in New Orleans with Hurricane Katrina -- which also hit the poor hardest and exposed a dark underside of an international tourist mecca.

With the number of cases soaring and clinics overwhelmed, officials this month belatedly directed more than 1,000 soldiers to join firefighters, volunteers and others in patrolling streets and inspecting tens of thousands of homes in a much-publicized offensive. The teams fumigate and destroy stands of still water, where mosquitoes breed.

Anti-dengue squads are focusing on the poor hillside favelas where many live in close quarters amid substandard sanitary conditions. Declared Rio Gov. Sergio Cabral, "We must fight dengue in the same way we cannot tolerate the occupation of favelas by drug traffickers."