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Health officials say an outbreak of dengue fever has infected more than 32,000 people in Rio de Janeiro state and claimed at least 47 lives. While city officials have denied the outbreak is an epidemic, the number of deaths this year already has outstripped the number of fatalities in all of 2002, the last year there was an officially recognized epidemic. Federal Health Minister Jose Gomes Temporao says he already is treating the situation in Rio, where about 51 new cases of the disease are reported every hour, as an epidemic.
My question is why in the world city officials in Rio would not call this an epidemic.
