Brazil

One evening, shortly after arriving in Brazil there was a diabolical noise in the road outside the apartment.  I looked out and saw a small truck belching black smoke and making the sort of noise that would really impress Spanish teenager motorcyclists.  Flavia explained that this was the fumacê which burns oil to create black smoke to prevent (mosquitoes).  A few days later a (mosquito man) from the town hall arrived for his annual visit and put tablets in the u-bends of the water outlets in the floors of the bathrooms.

This is part of a very big scheme to try to control malaria and dengue in Brazil.  This also explained why there are not many (mosquitoes) around the town.

The word mosquito derives from Latin via Spanish and Portuguese and means ‘little fly.’  It is the female of the species that is dangerous – she…needs the (protein) in blood to produce eggs.  In Europe (mosquitoes) are little more than a nuisance but in parts of the world they are dangerous killers.  If Europe gets any warmer they could easily become a problem in the south.

Malaria is the danger that most people know about.  The malaria map for Brazil shows that it is the northern part of Brazil outside of the bigger cities that is affected.  The Amazon area is hot and wet which are the perfect conditions for breeding.  It is a dangerous disease worldwide and kills a lot of people every year.  In fact malaria is not that big a problem here; in 2003 there were only 30 deaths.  Bill Gates is not a person I often refer to favourably but I do admire him for the many millions he has donated to malaria research through his foundation.

Dengue fever is a bigger problem at the moment, especially in the urban areas.  It is a very painful disease; in my childhood in the Caribbean it was known as ‘break-bone fever.’  It affects most of the country except the far South.  Earlier this year just in the State of Rio de Janeiro there were 23,555 cases of dengue, including 30 deaths, in less than three months.  Similar statistics apply to most areas of the country; and Espirito Santo had 703 cases in a few weeks this January.

There is no cure or vaccine for dengue fever.  (All) you can do is take the usual treatments for fever and wait for it to go away.  The strong and healthy will recover and the weak can die.  Once you have had one of the four strains of dengue you are immune to a recurrence of that strain.  Unfortunately it also means that if you have an attack by one of the other strains it is more likely to be (hemorrhagic) which is very dangerous.

The only weapon against dengue is to fight the mosquito itself.  It breeds in still water and so old car tires, empty cans and plastic containers, flower pots…puddles in the road and even large leaves can all be breeding grounds.

(Excerpted from Steve in Brazil 2008 and reproduced here with light edits in brackets and in bold)