03/01/2024 – 21:51
Dourados, in Mato Grosso do Sul, became this Wednesday, the 3rd, the first city in the world to begin a mass vaccination process against dengue. This was only possible thanks to the partnership with the pharmaceutical company Takeda.
Brazil will only start adopting the vaccine next month as part of the national calendar. As the Estadãothe forecast is that around 3.1 million people can be vaccinated in this first year of the campaign, as Takeda will be able to deliver around 6.2 million doses in 2024 – 1.2 million through donations and 5 million under the purchase contract – and the complete vaccination schedule involves two doses.
The local city hall announced that the first dose was administered to Francisleine Costa, mother of teenager Julio Cesar da Costa, aged 15, who died of dengue fever in 2023. “My son was buried on his birthday. Now the vaccine has arrived and I am campaigning for everyone to get vaccinated so that they don't go through the same pain. I am happy that Dourados is the first city to provide this service to the public.”
Municipal management reported high demand on the first day of immunization. Initially, 90 thousand doses of the Qdenga vaccine were distributed. But the pharmaceutical company guaranteed the supply of 150,000 doses, enough for all Douradense residents between the ages of 4 and 59.
The immunization is part of a pharmaceutical project in partnership with researcher Julio Croda, from the Federal University of Mato Grosso do Sul (UFMS), which seeks to evaluate the protection provided outside the laboratory, in a real population. “There are 300,000 available doses that expire in August this year and will be used for this study, the first of its kind for this vaccine worldwide,” Croda told the newspaper The globe. Takeda, in turn, stated that the initiative began even before the purchase of doses by the federal government.
Prevalence
Data from the World Health Organization (WHO) on the number of dengue cases in 2023, released by Estadão ten days ago, point to Brazil as the country with the highest incidence of the disease. In total, there were 2.9 million cases as of December 11th – more than half of the more than 5 million registered worldwide. According to the entity, there is a historic level for dengue fever.
The WHO warned that the disease had also spread to countries where it historically did not circulate, such as France, Italy and Spain. Among the reasons for the spread is the climate crisis, which has raised global temperatures and allowed the mosquito that transmits dengue, Aedes aegypti, to survive in environments where this did not occur before – in this way, it is able to reproduce more and more.
The El Niño phenomenon, which has now reached its peak, has also accentuated the effects of global warming temperatures and climate change, and its effects, including unprecedented heat waves, are expected to persist until May or June. The Brazilian Ministry of Health is already projecting an increase in cases of the disease this year – and, therefore, will adopt the application of the vaccine in general, something also unprecedented in the world.
Deaths
WHO data also warns of the number of serious cases of dengue fever: in total, 5,000 people died from the disease this year around the world. In Brazil, 1,474 cases, or 0.05% of total records, are of the hemorrhagic version, which can kill.
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