Akpabli Januarius 

In Brazil, the unprecedented surge of dengue fever cases has more than doubled and is  expected to reach into the millions. It has potentially killed thousands of people. 

Several of Brazil’s most populous states have declared health emergencies in the past month just ahead of carnival season as rising global temperatures and heavy rains brought outbreaks of the tropical disease spread by the Aedes aegypti mosquito.

The disease is said to have surged with particular virulence in Brazil where epidemiologists expect the number of dengue cases to reach into the millions. According to them, this deepening public crisis serves as a warning to the world.

So far this year, Brazil has recorded about 512,000 dengue cases—more than three times the number recorded for the same period last year. “We may see the largest number of dengue cases on record this year,” Fabianco Duarte Carvalho, a biologist at Brazil’s public health research institute, the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz), told Bloomberg. “The climate crisis has a direct impact on the proliferation of vectors such as Ae aegypti.”

But climate is not the only factor to blame for the surge. “The cities are growing and becoming paradise for mosquitoes,” says Marcia Castro, a public-health specialist at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston, Massachusetts. Adequate sanitation infrastructure often fails to keep pace with the growth of Brazilian cities. Uncollected rubbish becomes a breeding ground for the insects, as does water stored by people who don’t have regular access to tap water.

About three quarters of dengue cases are symptomless but the disease can be fatal. Symptoms include headaches, fever, and intense joint pain while serious cases can take several weeks to recover from.

Local and national health authorities have stepped up their response, notably boosting prevention measures, which include community health agents crisscrossing cities on the lookout for containers of stagnant water that could permit mosquitoes to breed.

“Our strategies are old and heavily focused on vector control,” said Ethel Maciel, the secretary for health surveillance at the health ministry. But amid “a significant change in the pattern of dengue” – with earlier and bigger spikes in infections – the government is turning to newer technologies with medium-term results, such as vaccines and the release of mosquitoes infected with bacteria that limit the transmission of dengue and other arboviruses to humans.

Photo Credit: https://images.app.goo.gl/BrAs7NNYUcdoujuS8