Dengue kills 14 in India, affects over 400

New Delhi's health minister, Yoganand Shastri, told reporters the moves to stop the spread of dengue were aimed at keeping the outbreak from becoming an epidemic.

But if "the outbreak is not contained by Tuesday, we will declare it an epidemic," he told reporters.

Female Aedes mosquitoes transmit the disease, and symptoms include high fever, joint pain, headache and vomiting. It is fatal in rare cases.

Eleven of the deaths have been in New Delhi, Shastri said, while three other people died in Uttar Pradesh.

As a 3-year-old girl, Nisha Dubey, died of suspected dengue in a state-run village health centre on the outskirts of Lucknow on Sunday, her relatives mobbed the centre alleging that the death occurred because of a lack of medical attention.

"There were no doctors or paramedics present when we brought Nisha, who was running a high fever, to the health center. My daughter died waiting for treatment," RK Dubey told The Associated Press.

New Delhi is filled with pools of stagnating water where the insects breed - they can be found everywhere from well-kept parks to trash-strewn lots - and health workers on Monday sprayed pesticides and fumigated homes, offices and shops, said NK Yadav, New Delhi's municipal health officer.

Breeding season for the Aedes mosquito starts in August, as

India's annual monsoon season beings to wind down.

"As of now 448 cases of dengue have been reported - 247 from New Delhi and 201 from Uttar Pradesh and Haryana states," Shastri said Sunday. Uttar Pradesh and Haryana are northern Indian states that border New Delhi.

Last year, authorities reported four fatalities among a total of 217 dengue fever cases across India.

This year's outbreak has also hit New Delhi's All India Institute of Medical Sciences, the country's premier state-run health institute. So far, 19 doctors and students have fallen ill with the disease and one has died.