SINGAPORE, March 11 (Reuters) - Outbreaks of dengue fever have risen in the Asia Pacific region in the past year, killing three times more victims in 2008 than in recent years, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Wednesday.

Chusak Prasittisuk, a dengue specialist with the WHO, said 3,255 people died of the disease last year in the organisation's Southeast Asia countries grouping, which also includes South Asia and North Korea as well as Indonesia, Thailand and Timor Leste. This compared to 1,202 in 2003.

"Dengue has emerged as a serious public health problem in the countries of the South-East Asia and Western Pacific Regions of WHO in the last two to three decades," Chusak told a 10-day workshop of Asian dengue specialists in Singapore on Tuesday, in a speech obtained by Reuters.

Dengue, the most widespread tropical disease after malaria, is transmitted by mosquitoes and causes fever, headaches and agonising muscle and joint pains, which can lead to uncontrolled bleeding and death.

Chusak said in the speech the frequency of outbreaks was increasing and the epidemiology of the disease was evolving in the past 20 years.

"Despite the availability of effective tools to control dengue, efforts to prevent and control dengue have been constrained due to lack of sustained political commitment, inadequate resources and lack of coordinated efforts," he said.

Approximately 2.5 billion people are at risk globally for dengue, 1.8 billion of whom are located in the Asia Pacific Region, ranging from Bangladesh to Timor Leste.

WHO has developed an Asia-Pacific Dengue Strategic Plan for the prevention and control of dengue in Asia-Pacific, in response to the increasing threat from the disease, he said.

Of the estimated 230 million people infected annually, two million, mostly children, develop dengue haemorrhagic fever, a severe form of one of the types of the virus.

Vaccines maker Sanofi Pasteur said in February it had begun a clinical study testing a vaccine against dengue fever in children. (Reporting by Nopporn Wong-Anan; Editing by Sugita Katyal)

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