Pablo Sigal
02/20/2020 - 14:53
- Clarín.com
- Society
While the coronavirus begins to cause some psychosis in Argentina, by travelers who return from China and warn that they are not controlled in Ezeiza, there is a more palpable reality and worrying borders inside: in the last hours there were two deaths from dengue and measles In in the country.
According to the sources to which Clarín had access, two men over 50 years of age living in Buenos Aires territory and who died in the last hours in Buenos Aires health centers.
The sources detailed that the one killed by dengue is a neighbor of the town of Avellaneda , while the victim of measles lived in the La Matanza party .
The Ministries of Health of the Nation and of the Province plan to publish the detailed report of both fatalities this Friday morning, in the weekly epidemiological bulletin.
According to the sources consulted, the measles died suffered from encephalopathy due to the disease. The news worries because since 1998 there were no deaths from this disease in the country , It is transmitted from person to person.
The measles outbreak in the country began timidly in 2018 and in 2019 it expanded strongly. The last Epidemiological Bulletin of the Ministry of Health of the Nation reported 126 confirmed cases , from the last week of August to February 7. They are concentrated in four games of Greater Buenos Aires and in the City of Buenos Aires.
The Province, meanwhile, is on alert for the proliferation of both diseases, but in the particular case of measles they attribute it to a weak vaccination campaign of the previous Government.
The Minister of Health, Ginés González García, said this week that "they are working hard trying to block, revaccination. In some cases house by house we make the strategy and we are on high alert ."
As for dengue, they say that they continue with the fumigation operations, but that the best tool against the Aedes aegypti mosquito (transmitter of the disease) is scrapping to avoid incubation of larvae. According to the latest official figures, in the Buenos Aires district there are 96 confirmed cases, of which 91 are imported.
A tool that they would have on file in the Province is the public production of repellents in a plant in La Plata. This would give access to the protection of a wider sector of the population that today cannot buy these products.
The last major dengue epidemics in the country occurred in 2009, when there were five deaths , and in 2016, when 11 deaths were officially counted. Since that time no new deaths had been recorded.
Cases of fatal dengue occur when the one who contracts the disease does it for the second time with a strain different from the previous one, which can unleash dengue hemorrhagic fever. As reported this week, in Misiones for example (one of the most affected provinces) there are currently two strains in circulation.
The national panorama is as follows: five cases of indigenous dengue in Santa Fe and more than 20 imported. There are five other non-native cases in Mendoza. In Salta 77 cases of dengue were reported and in San Luis only one case, imported. In Missions there are 75 patients. In Entre Ríos so far there were 8 cases of native dengue and 22 imported. And Jujuy recorded 13 cases. Córdoba, 53 cases, of which 23 are indigenous. And in Formosa, 106 cases, of which 58 are indigenous. While the latest report from the province of Corrientes confirmed 35 cases.
Regional concern
What happens in Argentina is not an isolated event, but it affects the entire region. In fact, in the last days the first measles death of the last 20 years was recorded in Rio de Janeiro.
In this context, on Wednesday, the Ministers of Health of the Mercosur countries agreed, in Asunción, to strengthen surveillance and establish a "rapid action" to combat dengue, in the face of the expansion of the virus in the region since the beginning of the year.
The Paraguayan Julio Mazzoleni, the Argentine Ginés González García, the Brazilian Luiz Henrique Mandetta and the Uruguayan Raquel Rosa, who represented Minister Jorge Basso, participated in the III Extraordinary Meeting of Ministers of Health of Mercosur , convened to present precisely the epidemiological situation of dengue and measles.
Among the actions and proposals presented at that meeting, the representatives of Paraguay, Argentina and Uruguay were interested in the specific advances of Brazil, which adopted "a new approach to dengue," according to Minister Mandetta.
The Brazilian, as reported by the agency Télam, recalled that these epidemics are repeated "every year on greater or lesser scales", so that his country advances in the "biological control" of the mosquito and in the development of a vaccine against dengue which is in the "final investigation phase".
Within that framework, González García and Mandetta held a bilateral meeting in which officials agreed to share technological innovations for dengue control, since Brazil is one of the most affected countries in the region, the Argentine Ministry of Health reported.
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