Health

With one million dengue cases, Brazil launches mosquito eradication campaign

By Jon Martín Cullell

São Paulo, March 1 (EFE).- Brazilian cities are on alert due to the spread of dengue fever, with more than one million cases reported in the country within the first few months of 2024.

São Paulo, South America’s largest city, is constantly spraying insecticide and trying to make residents aware of the danger.

“The health department fights dengue!” shout city officials outside a house in a working-class neighborhood.

The epidemiological surveillance team was informed that Matheus, who lives in the house, had tested positive for the disease.

They had come to enforce the protocol by visiting all the houses on the street in search of mosquito breeding sites and conducting a general fumigation.

After ringing the doorbell for ten minutes, Matheus’ aunt, Lucilene Souza, opens the door. It turns out that the sick man does not live there, but he often visits her.

Thaysa Moura, the team’s coordinator, seems unsure and insists on going through every corner of the house, looking for buckets with accumulated water, where the white-striped mosquito that transmits dengue usually lays its eggs.

“It’s an absurd number of cases. On Friday alone, we had more cases than last year’s February,” says the official, covered in repellent and wearing a blue vest.

The disease, which causes high fever and muscle aches, has already killed 214 people across the country, with another 687 deaths still to be confirmed.

Amid the crisis, São Paulo City Hall has proposed buying 30,000 liters of insecticide and has increased fivefold the number of agents that patrol the streets to prevent the spread of the disease.

City experts estimate that about 80% of mosquito breeding sites are inside homes, so door-to-door work is essential. However, in 30% of the cases, neighbors do not allow the inspectors to enter.

Residents’ concerns

In the house next door to Souza’s, Cristina del Duque is afraid to open the door. The 58-year-old says she has hardly gone out since COVID-19, and even less now that she has seen the increase in dengue cases on television.

She does not have any plants, but she has lots of water bowls for her two dogs, a dozen for her canaries, and an aquarium for her three fish.

“I change the water for the animals every day,” she explains to Moura, who has already approached the aquarium with her mobile phone lantern to look for larvae.

Dengue is also causing tension in the house across the street, where Reinilda Pereira is at odds with her mother-in-law.

Pereira, 54, says she takes good care of herself because she had a daughter who died of dengue as a child but seems concerned about her mother-in-law’s negligence.

Distracted, the mother-in-law says quietly: “If you spend the day worrying, you’ll end up getting sick.”

“Even if you warn them, there are people who still have accumulated water, it’s an exhausting battle,” says Moura.

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