To combat dengue, health agents in Brazil search for mosquitoes in scrapyards and rooftops

The small team of state health workers moved among the car parts scattered around a scrapyard in Rio de Janeiro, looking for stagnant water where the mosquitoes They could have laid their eggs.

They are part of a national initiative to stop the rebound in denguetransmitted by mosquitoes, during the peak tourism season in Brazilwhich will end at the end of February.

Entomologist Paulo Cesar Gomes found some mosquito larvae swimming in the rainwater accumulated inside the bumper of a car.

“We call these types of places strategic points.” due to the large number of objects that arrive from everywhere, he said. “It is difficult that there is not mosquitoes here”.

At the beginning of the month, a few days before Rio opened its world-famous Carnival, the city joined several states and the capital, Brasilia, in declaring a public health epidemic due to the record number of cases of dengue registered this year.

“We had more cases in January than in any other month of January“said Ethel Maciel, director of health surveillance at the Ministry of Health, in an interview with The Associated Press.

So far this year, Brazil has registered 512,000 cases throughout the country, between confirmed and probable, almost four times more than in the same period in 2023.

In addition, 425 possible deaths due to denguewith 75 confirmed, compared to just over a thousand all of last year.

He dengue It is a viral infection that is transmitted to humans through the bite of a mosquito. Frequent rains and high temperatures, which accelerate the hatching of the insect’s eggs and the development of its larvae, make the hot city of Rio especially susceptible to outbreaks.

Many of those infected never develop symptoms, but the dengue It can cause high fever, headaches, muscle aches, nausea, and skin rashes, according to the World Health Organization. Although most improve within a week, some develop a serious illness that requires hospitalization and can be fatal.

Health workers like Gomes, equipped with masks and plastic gloves, meticulously search the scrapyard on a hot morning, gently kicking and shaking the stacked car parts in search of any trace of Aedes aegypti, the mosquito that can transmit the virus. dengue.

Every time he encountered standing water, Gomes would take a hand pipette from his bag and look for larvae, which he would collect in a white plastic container. The captured mosquitoes and larvae are kept alive and taken to a city laboratory to be tested for carrying the virus.

In places where there are positives, agents spray the walls with a product that kills mosquitoes and monitor the place for weeks.

Maciel pointed out that the first warning about a possible pandemic occurred in September.

The country’s main research institute, the state-funded Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, or Fiocruz, proposed several scenarios indicating that Brazil could reach 4.2 million cases this year, up from 1.6 million in 2023.

According to Maciel, the rebound is due to excessive heat and intense rains. Both could be a consequence of climate change or of The boya natural, temporary and occasional warming of part of the Pacific Ocean that modifies weather patterns across the planet.

Currently, four serotypes of the virus are circulating at the same time, one of which has not been seen for 15 years, Maciel said.

In Rio, more than 80% of mosquito breeding sites are on residential properties, health authorities said. Therefore, efforts to combat dengue They must start in homes, and awareness is key, said Mário Sérgio Ribeiro, a health supervisor in the state of Rio de Janeiro.

The regional authorities launched the initiative “10 minutes that save lives” to encourage residents to inspect their homes, offices and places of worship for standing water.

Health workers and volunteers went door to door, walking the narrow streets of Rio’s Tabajara favela to spread the word. They distributed leaflets and went up to rooftops in search of containers with rainwater.

An older woman, Vilza da Costa, told the AP she believed she had contracted the disease.

“I started with a fever, then my whole body itched, I was weak and in a lot of pain. It was very very bad”, he said. “There are many mosquitoes here”.

During the Carnival, which ended on Wednesday, health workers welcomed visitors with free repellent. A van with a crossed-out mosquito and the words “Against him dengue every day” soured and closed the parades several nights for millions of television viewers to see.

The effects of Carnival will not be seen for another week, Maciel said. Although he dengue It is not transmitted between people, the increase in tourism can drive the spread of the disease to areas that have not been affected before.

It was unclear whether the rebound in cases has reached its peak and “are going to start going down, or if the worst possible scenario is happening“Maciel added.