Brazil has record number of dengue cases in 2015

Brazil registered 1.6 million cases of dengue fever in 2015, a new record, up from the last record of 1.4 million cases in 2013, the country's Health Ministry announced on Friday.

The most populated southeastern region reported the highest number of cases, 1.02 million, or 62 percent of the total cases. The northeastern region had 311,500 cases, followed by the midwestern region with 221,000 cases, the southern region 56,100 cases and the northern region 34,100 cases.

April registered the highest incidence of dengue last year, with 229.1 cases for every 100,000 inhabitants.

After that, the incidence gradually fell until November, when it started to increase again, which is considered normal because warmer climates favor the reproduction of dengue-transmitting mosquitos, Aedes aegypti.

Dengue-related deaths reached 863 in 2015, also record high. The southeastern region also saw the highest death toll - 563, followed by the midwestern region, with 100 deaths.

Dengue is endemic to Brazil and epidemics are frequent in the country.

Lately, two other diseases transmitted by the Aedes mosquito, the zika virus and chikungunya fever, started to occur in the country, spreading quickly to all regions and causing an alarm, although unlike dengue, chikungunya and zika are not potentially lethal.

Zika used to be the least harmful of the three diseases, because its symptoms are mild compared to the other two.

But in recent months, authorities discovered that infections caused zika virus were responsible for a sharp and significant increase in cases of microcephaly in newborns. Health authorities managed to find a connection between zika and microcephaly: many women who had babies with microcephaly in the past few months were infected with the zika virus in the early months of their pregnancies.

The discovery scared Brazilian women and prompted the government to intensify efforts to fight endemics of the Aedes aegypti mosquitos. Endi