The Philippines recently declared a national dengue epidemic due to their ongoing outbreak. In 2019 alone, the country has confirmed over 600 deaths related to the virus.

Medical experts are urging the population to seek immediate medical attention if they are suffering from any of the key symptoms. Those can include a high fever, uncontrolled vomiting, abdominal pain, or dizziness.

Dengue fever may be a mild illness most of the time, but the cases seem to be much worse here. Not only have they seen an increase in cases, but in severity as well.

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If you feel like you’re always swarmed by mosquitoes more so than everyone else at the summer barbecues, you may not be wrong.

For some people, the insects just want more of their blood. But, it’s not a case of bad luck that causes such a problem. Several genetic reasons cause mosquitoes to bite some people more than others.

Why Do Mosquitoes Need to Bite People?

Before we can understand why mosquitoes bite some people more than others, it’s helpful to know why mosquitoes bite in the first place.

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It’s a simple fact of life that mosquitoes bite humans, though the reasoning behind this isn’t always clear. We’ve always considered egg production to be the key factor in the past, but studies show there’s more to mosquito bites than people think.

What Makes Mosquitoes Bite People?

As many people may know, it is only female mosquitoes who bite. This is typically to get protein needed for the formation of their eggs. Because these mosquitoes can often lay over 100 eggs at a time, they understandably need a lot of protein.

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Many different terms are used to describe how diseases affect public health. Words like “pandemic”, “endemic” or “epidemic” may be thrown about for the current status of an illness.

But, one you may not hear very much is “global health emergency.” The World Health Organization recently used this rare term to describe the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

This announcement had many people asking: what is a global health emergency and what makes such an event different from others?

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From the fall months through the spring, every sneeze or feeling of nausea creates fear of the flu. The virus is at its most dangerous and contagious during these months, also known as flu season. That’s because the respiratory illness can cause a range of severity, from mild to life-threatening.

One sneeze or cough from a seemingly infected person can spread the virus during these months. It may only take being in the same vicinity of the virus to contract the flu.

And after the infection starts, so do the symptoms.

A cough, sore throat, body aches and fever can all come from the flu. While most people recover in less than two weeks, it can be severe and lead to hospitalizations and death.

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