- Intense headache
- Pain behind the eyes
- Muscle and joint pain
- Nausea and vomiting
- Red spots on the body
The ministry warns that it is important to seek a health service for adequate diagnosis and treatment when presenting possible symptoms of dengue.
“Most people have the classic form of the disease. A small percentage have the severe form, which can lead to hemorrhagic dengue fever”, explains infectious disease specialist Rosana Richtmann.
The severe form is the one that worries. After the feverish period, the individual must pay attention to the warning signs:
- Severe and continuous abdominal pain
- Persistent vomiting
- Accumulation of fluids in body cavities
- Mucosal bleeding
- Hemorrhages
Treatment and diagnosis
The diagnosis of dengue is basically clinical — there is no need to perform specific tests. There is also no specific medicine for the disease. Dengue, in most mild cases, heals spontaneously after 10 days.
For mild cases with symptomatic symptoms, it is recommended:
- Relative rest, while the fever lasts;
- Encouragement of fluid intake;
- Administration of paracetamol or dipyrone in case of pain or fever;
- Do not administer acetylsalicylic acid;
- Recommendation to the patient to immediately return to the health service, in case of alarm signs.
“Patients who present warning signs or serious illness require hospitalization for appropriate clinical management”, warns the Ministry of Health.
Dengue care
Avoid any unprotected standing water reservoir at home. The mosquito can use large spaces, such as water tanks and open swimming pools, as well as small objects, such as bottle caps and plant pots, as breeding sites.
Add sand to the plant dish or change the water once a week. But it’s not enough to empty the container. You need to rub it to remove the mosquito eggs deposited on the surface of the inner wall, just above the water level. This goes for any container with water.
Old tires must be punctured and stored under cover or collected by public cleaning. PET bottles and other empty containers must also be handed over to public cleaning. Empty vases and buckets must be placed upside down. Clean the mineral water and common water drinking tanks daily. Dry areas that accumulate rainwater. Cover the water tanks.
How the dengue vaccine works
The Qdenga dengue vaccine was incorporated into the Unified Health System (SUS) in December 2023. In January 2024, the Ministry of Health released the list of cities that will receive the vaccine. In total, around 500 municipalities in 16 states were included.
With few doses available, the government defined a target audience to be vaccinated: teenagers aged 10 to 14. Large municipalities were included — which are those with more than 100,000 inhabitants — and classified as high transmission of type 2 dengue. Nearby cities are also on the list, in what the government calls “health regions”.
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Qdenga dengue vaccine was approved by Anvisa — Photo: EPTV Reproduction
Qdenga (TAK-003) is an immunizer against dengue developed by the Japanese laboratory Takeda Pharma. The vaccine contains live attenuated dengue virus. Therefore, it induces immune responses against the four serotypes of the dengue virus.
The vaccine is applied in a two-dose schedule, with an interval of three months between applications.
Why this increase in dengue cases in 2024?
According to the Ministry of Health, the projected increase in cases of the disease is due to factors such as the combination of excessive heat and intense rain (possible effects of El Niño) and the recent resurgence of serotypes 3 and 4 of the dengue virus in Brazil.
In an interview with the podcast “O Assunto, Stefan Cunha Ujvari, infectious disease specialist at Hospital Alemão Oswaldo Cruz and author of the book “The history of epidemics”, explained that it is normal to have dengue epidemics from time to time.
“We were expecting this epidemic to appear at any moment. And, logically, the epidemic depends on several factors, such as an increase in temperature, which favors the proliferation of mosquitoes, a period of intense rain, which appears mainly during El Niño periods and, therefore, we can have our epidemics of dengue. We already have four types of dengue virus circulating in Brazil.”
The infectious disease specialist highlighted that El Niño and heat waves are favorable environments for the dengue mosquito. “In summer, with the rain and the heat wave, the mosquito population begins to increase and, therefore, the peak of epidemics is expected at the end of March and beginning of April. So, there is still a big prospect of the situation getting worse.”
