Autor: breakdengue

Dengue flourishes primarily in poor communities where resources are limited. However, if outbreaks are identified early, the resources that are available can be used to maximum effect.
A project by the California-based Brazil Health and Air Quality Team aims to use readily available environmental data to predict the potential for outbreaks, giving those affected a head start in deploying resources to control the vector (mosquitoes).
The ultimate goal of the project is to map the risk of dengue outbreaks, but to do that they first needed to understand the relationship between environmental factors such as temperature and humidity, and the risk of outbreaks.

The team began by building a model of the epidemic potential of dengue across urban areas of Brazil between 2003 and 2012. Epidemic potential is defined as “The capacity of a disease to remain in a population as a function of vector lifestyle and activity, mortality and the required incubation period of the disease.”
Using historical data on humidity and temperature, they found a correlation between outbreaks, low temperatures, and high humidity: outbreaks increase significantly two to three months after a period of lower than average temperature and one to two months after a period of higher than average humidity.
The team will be using this insight to map the risk of dengue outbreaks, but first they are looking to further understand the correlation and also analyze the role that other environmental factors can play, such as surface hydrology and vegetation.
Scientists hope that by pulling together data from several sources and taking a smarter approach to dengue control, they can keep us one step ahead of the disease.

Deep in Brazil’s Amazon basin, construction is progressing on the third biggest hydropower plant in the world: the Belo Monte hydroelectric dam. Situated on the Xingu River in the state of Pará, it was commissioned by the Brazilian government to help guarantee sustainable energy security for the country’s rapidly growing economy.
Brazil’s neighbors, particularly Bolivia, have deep concerns about the health and environmental impact of the dam. Quoted in Germany’s Spiegel Online, Bishop Erwin Kräutler (the current prelate of the Territorial Prelature of Xingu) believes the dam will cause the Xingu River to flood upstream, flooding the city of Altamira. Vast volumes of standing water would lead to a rise in dengue fever, among other health risks.
Elsewhere in Brazil the recently-completed Jirau and Santo Antônio dams – situated 50 and 110 miles, respectively, from Brazil’s Bolivian border – are the first part of a planned four-dam complex. These mega-dams are being blamed for flooding across Bolivia’s Amazonian region this year – the most disastrous flooding of the past 100 years, according to the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA). Flooding is so bad that a state of emergency has been declared, reported Christian Aid.
NACLA also highlights the strong debate over whether there is any real connection between Brazil’s dams and Bolivia’s flooding. Víctor Paranhos, head of Brazil’s Sustainable Energy Consortium, told the Inter Press Service that the dams neither caused nor aggravated the flooding in Bolivia. Instead he attributed the floods to recent heavy rainfalls saying, “It has never rained so much.”

Bolivian President Evo Morales, noted water levels were not dropping as they should have after the heavy rains had subsided and ordered an immediate investigation. The preliminary results, we are led to understand, showed the dams were pushing floodwaters back into Bolivia, instead of flowing out towards the Atlantic Ocean. Further investigations are being carried out.
Mega hydroelectric dams are being built as sustainable energy alternatives across Brazil, the Amazon, and other tropical regions. But are the dams causing flooding upstream substantially increasing the risk and spread of dengue and other diseases?