Partners and colleagues,
Let me start with thanks to DNDi, THSTI, and the Dengue Alliance for bringing us together at this moment. The timing could not be more urgent.
We are gathering at a crossroads.
The science is advancing, and the tools are within reach.
And yet the disease is outpacing us more than ever before.
In 2023, the situation was dire when WHO declared dengue a Grade 3 global emergency.
Then came 2024, and the situation deteriorated even further. It was the worst year ever documented, with over 14 million cases and 11,000 deaths.
This is not a temporary surge. This is a structural shift.
Climate change is expanding the territory of the Aedes mosquito. Rapid urbanization is creating the breeding conditions it prefers. The risk is rapidly expanding worldwide.
And more than half the global burden falls on our eleven Member States.
And dengue carries costs beyond health system costs. A 2024 macroeconomic study estimated that a single dengue outbreak reduced Thailand's GDP by approximately USD 1.81 billion.
These costs are often indirect— lost productivity, lost wages, lost futures. And they fall hardest on the households least equipped to absorb them.
This is both an economic crisis, and a social crisis.
To change this trajectory, we must close the gap between discovery, development, and delivery.
The first is delivery; strengthening what we already know works.
The last mile of dengue care runs through health systems that are often under-resourced and under-coordinated, particularly at the subnational level.
We must invest in local surveillance that detects outbreaks at district and municipality level before they spread; in a workforce trained to recognize early warning signs; and, in community literacy that empowers families to eliminate breeding sites and seek care early.
The second is discovery and development, accelerating the tools that will change the fight entirely.
We need rapid, affordable diagnostics that can differentiate dengue from other fevers at the bedside, without a lab;
that can identify specific virus serotypes; and that can identify which patients are at risk of deterioration.
We need antivirals that interrupt disease progression and reduce both suffering and the strain on our hospitals.
And we need next-generation vector control such as Wolbachia, that both disrupt mosquito populations, and block transmission.
We are not starting from zero.
In the last two years, WHO SEARO has launched a Regional Dengue Dashboard to track hotspots in real time.
We have reconstituted our Regional Technical Advisory Group.
We have launched WHO Academy e-learning and training resources.
We have invested in a South-South model of bedside training built on Sri Lanka's own remarkable story: a case fatality rate reduced from 5% in 1996 to just 0.07% in 2023
The people of region living under the shadow of dengue are not waiting for a framework. They are waiting for a fever to break.
Our work today is to bring together those who discover and develop new tools, with those who deliver them.
Every breakthrough of science that does not reach a patient is a breakthrough that does not count.
We have the knowledge. We are building the systems. Now we must synchronize.
Thank you.