A diphtheria outbreak joins the covid-19 in Peru after 20 years without cases

Diphtheria has returned to Peru after 20 years.

The Peruvian Ministry of Health convened a vaccination session against this disease and other similar ones over the weekend because, due to the urgency of the covid-19, it has only reached 40% of the annual goal of immunizations.

The health workers and the vaccines were not enough to satisfy the thousands of people who formed lines from the dawn in front of the vaccination centers.

In the last week, a girl and a 69-year-old woman died of diphtheria, against which hundreds of thousands of adults are not vaccinated.

The deaths occurred on October 30 and the health authority decreed a national epidemiological alert last Wednesday, a day after the Cayetano Heredia Hospital, which treated the 69-year-old patient, confirmed the presence of the bacteria.

So far there are five confirmed cases in Lima and dozens pending verification.

The alert seeks that health personnel pay attention to the spread of the disease and not confuse it with others.

The Minister of Health, Pilar Mazzetti, commented on Sunday that, given the problems of overcrowding and long waits for the elderly, immunization will continue during the next week and in December.

The minister also said that they hope to reach 60% of the immunization goal for the year.

On Saturday, more than 283,000 people were able to get vaccinated against various diseases, including diphtheria, a Ministry bulletin reported Sunday.

In the last two decades, adults have not been vaccinated against diphtheria in Peru because it was considered an eradicated disease.

The Deputy Minister of Public Health, Luis Suárez Ognio, pointed out that three of the relatives of the five-year-old girl who died were also infected, although he added that the pictures "are benign."

According to the official, the minor had received only one of the three doses of the vaccine that protects against diphtheria.

The family migrated last year from the Loreto region - which borders Brazil and Colombia - to the district of La Victoria, near the center of the capital, so that the father could get a job in a textile workshop.

He asked for financial help to bury his daughter in Contamana, his homeland, but the family is still isolated in Lima until medical discharge.

"We are seeing the consequences of the deterioration in vaccination coverage," explained the doctor and researcher Alfonso Nino about the reappearance of diphtheria on a local radio station last Thursday.

"In the investigations it has not been possible to identify the source [the origin of the contagion], however, with the bacteria that is isolated we will investigate if it is related to that of Brazil or Colombia or Chile," said Vice Minister Suárez.

Diphtheria in the capital

When the official notified the first case, he said that although the disease had been eradicated from Peru 20 years ago, it is still active in Venezuela and Brazil, a border country.

Suárez reported that health brigades vaccinated people in 120 blocks around the home of the first case in La Victoria, a district of the capital with a high presence of tuberculosis.

The Cayetano Heredia Hospital that treated the second diphtheria victim is located in the district of San Martín de Porres, in North Lima.

Luis Rodríguez, director of epidemiological surveillance of the Ministry of Health, reported that the emergency personnel of said establishment have also been vaccinated, as have the people in the neighborhood of the deceased patient.

Health personnel and patients of the public hospital that attends the largest number of deliveries in the capital, the Maternal Perinatal Hospital, located near the home of the girl victim of the disease, have also been immunized against diphtheria.

"We do not expect to have a widespread epidemic because it is a known disease and most of the population is vaccinated, but diphtheria causes death," said Suárez.

Although the numbers of contagion and deaths from covid-19 have decreased since September, Peru ranks tenth in the world for the number of infections -more than 920,000- and deaths -more than 34,800-.

A health intelligence report from the social health insurance, Essalud, estimates that a second wave could begin at the end of the year due to the reopening of economic activities.

Added to the pandemic is a large number of dengue cases, the incidence of which has not decreased for a year, and the reappearance of diphtheria is added to this picture.