UNLIKE the Den-2 dengue virus type that riddled Cuba in 1981, striking about 344,000 people and killing 158, the Den-2 hitting some 6,500 in Singapore this year is much milder.

Why? The latest Cuba-Singapore dengue tie-up hopes to answer this question, plus many more.

The ink on the collaboration documents has barely dried but already, the Cuba-Singapore dengue tie-up has three projects lined up - to study the management of the disease, the carrier of the disease and the virus itself, in the two countries.

The first project will study the similarities and differences in the dengue situations in the two countries, like how the spread of the disease is contained and how patients are treated.

The second project will study how the main carrier of the dengue virus - the aedes aegypti species of mosquito - behaves differently in the two countries.

Said head of the National Environement Agency's (NEA) Environmental Health Institute, Dr Ng Lee Ching: 'Our mosquitoes here are smaller than those in Cuba and the Cubans have found that smaller mosquitoes bite more. So we want to find out: do our mosquitoes bite more?'

A pertinent question, because more bites from the mosquito means a greater spread of the disease among humans.

For the Cubans, the director-general of Cuba's Institute of Pedro Kouri (IPK), Professor Gustavo Kouri, is curious why mosquitoes in Latin America carry both dengue and yellow fever, but not those in Southeast Asia.

The NEA and the IPK, which researches infectious diseases, were co-signees of the memorandum of understanding on infectious diseases between Cuba and Singapore yesterday (sep14).

The third project will study the genetic makeup of the four types of dengue viruses in the two countries.

Read the full report in Saturday's edition of The Straits Times.