 A wave of dengue cases have been reported in many countries in Latin America leaving experts worried. Brazil and Argentina are among the countries facing such spikes, but even smaller countries are seeing an uptick in the number of cases. The key question of course is what governments are doing to combat this rise. The official response has been quite mixed and in fact is dependent on the ideologies of these governments as well as their approach to public health. We go to Ana for more details. Ana, thank you so much for joining us. Cases of dengue from Ring reported especially in many parts of Latin America record numbers in many cases. So maybe could you first give us some kind of a survey of what is the kind of incident so to speak of these cases? Well, as you said, Latin America, many countries in Latin America are reporting record numbers of dengue. Among those of course Brazil which has said that this is the highest number that they have ever seen since they have been tracking outbreaks of dengue in the early 2000s, but also other countries like Argentina, like Peru, they've all been seeing multiple increases in the number of cases compared to what they're usually seeing. Many of the experts who have actually reacted to this have put this in relation with climate change and with the changing pattern on rainfall. So of course, the spread is essentially supported or actually promoted through these kind of changes that makes it possible for mosquitoes to circulate more easily and then reach more people. So this is kind of the situation right now. What is interesting to observe in these circumstances is the different approach that countries have taken. Of course, the news have been very rich in the announcements that governments, ministries of health have recognized that the problem is here, but the response has been different depending on the position of the government if we can put it that way. Right, Anna. So let's take that point you talked about and there are maybe two cases you can look at Brazil and Argentina. So starting with Brazil, what has the kind of response been? We know that the Lula government has been quite proactive on issues of health and so has it sort of carried over to this issue as well? Well, yes. So essentially we have seen a very significant shift in how health is approached in Brazil since Lula took office. And if we look only a couple of years back, we had Bolsonaro with his big drive against vaccination for COVID-19. And one of the things that has influenced how the response to the dengue fever is going right now in Brazil is essentially this. So in Brazil, we did have the government, a government, we do have a government which is willing to undertake vaccination. But the drive is still lagging and that's because of a number of reasons. One of which is this essentially the doubt that people are still feeling and against vaccination which has been promoted by the past government. So this is also something that the local media have reported, including Brazil, the FATO, which of course means that the vaccine is not reaching all of those people who it should reach and especially the groups that have been targeted as most important. This includes children up to 14 years of age. So it is a problem, but if we compare this to Argentina on which we can talk later, of course the recognition and the approach to the problem has been much more constructive. Right Anna, so of course the next question then is about Argentina because we know Javier Mele has come to power with an agenda that is very anti-state, it is very focused on cutting down services as much as possible. I think we already talked about some of the health impact of that new government. So how is this crisis being addressed by the government? Well that again depends on which government we are talking about. Of course the national government of Mele has been, to put it very nicely, has been lagging in the response that should be taken. But interestingly some of the provincial governments, including that of Buenos Aires, they have had a better approach to the thing. So now if we look at the numbers, some of the reports say that the incidence, the number of infections of dengue that people in Argentina have seen is about 200 times higher than to previous seasons. It's of course a lot. So what the provincial governments have asked the national government to do is to essentially pick up this vaccination campaign and ensure that the vaccine is made available to everyone in all the places. But of course the response has been very different so it has fallen on deaf ears if we can put it again that way. There hasn't been much of an update on the national level and that's essentially not so surprising giving the amount of attention that the importance of public health and including the health system has been, you know, the amount of importance this has been given by the new government in Argentina. Thank you so much Anna for the updates. Since the UN Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza protests have broken out across the Arab region. Jordan, Morocco and Egypt are among the countries where people have gathered in the thousands. Their demand is pretty simple, an immediate end to Israel's genocidal war on Gaza. Since these countries also have diplomatic relations with Israel, the severing of these ties has also been a prominent demand. What is driving these protests we go to Abdul to find out. Abdul, thank you so much for joining us. So protests have continuing in Jordan. It's been three or four days right now and Jordan has become one of the hubs of the protests in the region also taking place in Egypt, of course we'll go to that. But tell us a bit about the situation in Jordan itself. Well Prashant, as we all know that in Jordan, ever since the war began on October 7th, there have been massive protests going on. During the initial days of war, the protests were very large, which basically shaped the overall politics, Jordanian response, particularly because Jordan has a diplomatic relationship with Israel. It signed a peace treaty in 1994. So unlike several other countries, it has much more active diplomatic relationship with Israel. And that basically was at the center of the protests and that continues to be the case because the treaty, that relationship with Israel is not accepted by majority of the Jordanians, given the fact that there is a historical route between Palestine and Jordan, apart from Jordanians having a strong feeling of insupport of Palestinian nationalism, insupport of Palestinian cause. So protestors have primarily gathered both on the Jordanian border with the West Bank, occupied West Bank, as well as in Amman in the capital city where the Israeli embassy is located. And they basically, at least in the recent protests, the protest which is ongoing, for the last four days, they have been consistently demanding complete kind of breaking down of relationship between Jordan and Israel and complete implementation of the ceasefire resolution which was adopted by the UN Security Council earlier this week. Of course, the protestors have tried to storm the Israeli embassy as well. There is a US embassy nearby, there were protests there also. And they have been basically trying to kind of pressurize the Jordanian government to kind of take much more proactive role in kind of finding peace in Palestine and also kind of enacting some kind of backward to Israel for its occupation and its genocide of the Palestinian people. Right. Of course, Abdul, the other country where this is taking place is Egypt also. And it's interesting, like you said, that the two countries where protests are really building up are the two which have diplomatic ties with what you call with Israel. So could we maybe talk a bit about the protests in Egypt as well as how you see this trend of the question of normalization itself. We know that after Jordan, some countries also recently normalized, there's been a pushback against that from the streets as well. Well Prashant, there are protests in Egypt also. And Egypt, by the way, was the first country which had signed peace treaty with, first Arab country which has signed peace treaty with Israel way back in 1979. So despite the fact that there is an active ban on any kind of public political protests in Egypt, people have defied government norms and come out and protested demanding ceasefire, demanding seawaring of breaking the relationship with Israel and so on and so forth. But the protests are not limited to Egypt also, by the way. There are very large scale protests going on in different cities in Morocco, which was the latest country which basically normalized its relationship with Israel under the so-called Abraham Accords. Basically, a US diplomatic push in support of its ally in the region Israel. And Morocco, the protests are quite vibrant and they have primarily been mobilized by the group which basically came up against the government normalizing relationship with Israel. So there are protests in Morocco, there are reports of protests in Tunisia as well. And of course, in the past, there have been protests in Iraq and in several other countries. And as far as the normalization process is concerned, of course, there is a complete public, you can say, dislike for such kind of measure, which was taken by the governments in this region, some of the governments in this region, under the US, you can say US pressure. But since the war breakout has broken out, sorry, and since the people have mobilized on the streets, they have been quite vocal and quite articulate about all such normalization process. And that has led to a fact, you can say, a large number of countries which are considered to be on the verge of signing some kind of normalization deal with Israel have backed out of such moves. And there is hardly any possibility of any such normalization until there is a concrete step taken, not only to end the current war in Gaza, but also to basically find a solution for the Palestinian issue, which would mean creating an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as a capsule that has been the demand of most of the people. And also because of the popular pressure in lately, most of the governments have also been forced to take such demands with Israel and with the on the international forums. Well, Abul, thank you so much for that update. And that's all we have in today's episode. We'll be back with a fresh daily debrief tomorrow. In the meantime, do visit our website, peoplesdispatch.org. Follow us on all the social media platforms. And if you're watching this on YouTube, please hit the subscribe button.