The World Health Organisation predicts a cholera outbreak that could affect 300,000, followed by a malaria epidemic.
Earlier this month it was reported that a malaria epidemic was raging in the north of the country, with over a million cases and 658 deaths since July.
"The chances of there being a malaria epidemic in this country at present are relatively low because there has not been secondary malaria here since the 1950s.
The malaria epidemic of 1866 68 drove shipping away from Port Louis, which further declined after the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869.
Its graveyard contains one particularly tragic cluster of stones: 13 tiny markers, each of which represents a child killed, before Dickens's time, in a malaria epidemic.
The discovery of resistance to drugs – which have, with insecticide-impregnated bednets, altered the course of the malaria epidemic – "threatens worldwide initiatives to control and eliminate malaria", reports a paper in the Lancet.
The town, named after a similar township in France, developed quickly after a malaria epidemic in 1867, which forced Port Louis residents to relocate to safer areas in the highlands.
Against the backdrop of political infighting, drought and famine continued to periodically plague the country, particularly in 2003, when the crisis was exacerbated by widespread incidence of waterborne illnesses and a malaria epidemic.
Brazil had also controlled a burgeoning malaria epidemic with insecticides.
Several studies have examined the spatiotemporal variations in malaria epidemic risk, particularly in Africa [6, 7].
Recent works have considered the problem of using transgenic mosquitoes to control a malaria epidemic.
