Dengue fever has claimed a third life in New Caledonia.
Photo: 123rf
The mosquito-borne virus is rampant in the French territory with three deaths in the past month.
All the dead are women who had not travelled in the three weeks prior to their deaths and had succumbed within a few days of contracting the virus.
A doctor at the Health and Social Affairs Directorate, Jean-Paul Grangeon, said each day between 10 and 12 people are hospitalised and the peak of the epidemic is yet to be reached.
He says as many as 100,000 people, or nearly 40 percent of the population of New Caledonia could be affected.
Authorities declared an epidemic at the beginning of January.
