Brazil experiences dengue outbreak while delaying basic sanitation targets; understand

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Water distribution, sewage treatment and garbage collection are related to mosquito proliferation. The country invests little to universalize access to sanitation. Aedes aegypti EPTV Reproduction Brazil is experiencing a dengue outbreak that could be the worst in history in Latin America, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). At the same time, it delays the implementation of the goals of universal basic sanitation, which can reduce mosquito proliferation. According to a study prepared based on public Senate hearings last year, Brazil needs to double investments in sanitation infrastructure to reach the goals by 2033 – the deadline established by law. “This is because the annual average investment has been R$20 billion, while a (conservative) average of R$44 billion per year is necessary to be able to achieve the required legal target”, says the Senate document. How to know if you have dengue and if it is serious Sanitation targets In 2020, the government published the Legal Framework for Basic Sanitation, which establishes that universalization targets must be met by December 31, 2033. According to the text, until this date: 99% of the population must have access to the water distribution network; 90% of the population must have access to sewage collection and treatment. According to data from the Ministry of Cities, in 2022, around 85% of the population had access to the water distribution network, while 56% was served by a sewage network. “The milestone came to bring this sense of urgency. Brazil has more than 5.5 thousand municipalities, each municipality needs to understand what its reality is, understand how its contract is […], understand what the goals are, and establish planning”, says the president of Instituto Trata Brasil, Luana Pretto. Basic sanitation: Brazil is still far from meeting goals after three years of the legal framework According to the entity, in 2022, Brazil invested on average R$ 138.7 per inhabitant, when it should be investing R$ 231. For Pretto, if the country maintains this level of investment, it will be difficult to achieve the universalization goals. The president of Instituto Trata Brasil also highlights the inequality in access. to sanitation. “We have different realities. Today, the difference in relation to access to sanitation is very large, especially in the North and Northeast regions, the gap [diferença] It’s huge”, he declared. According to Pretto, the North region has 60% of the population with access to water and 14% with access to sewage collection and treatment. The Northeast has just over 30% collection and treatment. The Southeast, on the other hand, highlights, it is close to universalization. Relationship between dengue and access to water For the professor at the Faculty of Public Health at USP, Maria Anice Mureb Sallum, the lack of access to water distribution, or its intermittency, encourages storage, which can be become a source of dengue fever. “When we talk about basic sanitation, this issue of distribution of water resources, of drinking water, also comes into play. Here [São Paulo], for example, we have drinking water distribution, the problem is that it is not reliable enough to not need a water tank”, he says. Sallum explains that water storage is a way of guaranteeing the availability of the resource. ” However, if the water tank is not built properly, to prevent Aedes aegypti from entering to lay eggs, it ends up becoming an important and highly productive breeding site”, she declared. The professor also highlights that the inadequate disposal of Waste, such as plastic, can lead to the accumulation of water. These objects then become an important breeding ground for mosquitoes. “People throw them in places and end up accumulating an incredible amount of plastic material, PET bottles, bottles and packaging of all types . In general, in vacant lots, abandoned buildings, these containers also become good breeding grounds for mosquitoes when they also manage to accumulate water”, he says. Sewage treatment The USP professor states that there are still no documented cases of dengue mosquito proliferation in sewers in Brazil, although laboratory studies show that the mosquito can also reproduce in these environments “In other places in the world, aedes aegypti larvae have been found in natural sewage. Furthermore, a group of researchers from the Federal University of Paraná who, in laboratory experiments, demonstrated that female Aedes aegypti deposit larvae, which develop very well and generate adults in raw sewage water”, says Sallum. She highlights that these cases cannot be found in nature, but states that sewers are places that “deserve certain immunological surveillance”. For Pretto, from Instituto Trata Brasil, the lack of sanitation is related to the proliferation of diseases linked to water quality and transmitted by water. mosquitoes. “When there is no access to sewage collection and treatment, we have raw sewage infiltrating the ground, or sometimes going into open pits, and then, when this sewage is mixed with rainwater, it also sometimes ends up forming puddles and forming puddles. places with stagnant water”, he says.

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