Dengue fever as cases increase by 50% – 03/06/2024 – Balance and Health

Few people waited under the scorching sun at 1pm in front of UPA 26 de Agosto, in Itaquera, to receive care. This is because, as of this Wednesday (6), the 12-meter tent intended for testing people suspected of dengue fever was transferred to a covered area.

Itaquera is among the areas declared to have a dengue epidemic in São Paulo. The tent was set up at the UPA on February 5th, and the unit became a reference in the region for testing and caring for people suspected of having the disease. In one month, 3,966 people were treated, and 859 tested positive.

Under the tent, equipped with air conditioning, around 30 people were waiting for treatment, many of them feverish, others complaining of severe body pain. Nurses bustle around with thermometers and blood pressure cuffs.

“I have a lot of headache and back pain. Where I live, in Penha, ten people on the same street had dengue fever”, says Jose Maria Pereira, 56, an ice transporter who had been waiting since 11am to take the test, next to the four year old son.

He was not the only one to complain about the delay in service. The average wait for those there was 2 hours, after going through the screening — which includes registration and measurement of vital signs — to take the test.

Renato Henrique de Souza Lima, 34, went to the UPA to accompany his 56-year-old mother, whose symptoms were headache, vomiting and sore throat — the latter is not a symptom of dengue fever — in addition to suffering from high blood pressure. Both had been waiting under the tent since 10am. After some complaints from Lima, the mother’s temperature was measured, revealing a fever of 39.4. She was then taken to the UPA, where cases considered at risk are directed.

“There is only this hospital here in the region”, says Lima, who lives in Jardim São Pedro, about 20 minutes away from the UPA, where, inside, children are crying.

It’s a time of seasonal infections, says Claudia Cristina Lopes de Carvalho, manager of UPA 26 de Agosto. “Our average service is 1,200 patients per day. We serve 23 thousand patients per month, but the capacity is 15 thousand”, she says. As he finished his sentence, a nurse burst into the room, informing the manager that an 11-year-old child, run over and thrown four meters, had just arrived at the unit and needed hospitalization.

From Monday to Tuesday, 58 people tested positive for dengue at UPA 26 de Agosto. Compared to last week, the number of cases increased by 50%, according to data from the unit itself reported by Carvalho.

She says that the tent was set up so that the treatment of dengue cases does not impact the flow of care for patients with other diseases. In addition to the rapid test, in which the results take around 20 minutes, people with dengue fever are subjected to the snare test. The test consists of squeezing the arm with an elastic band, as if the patient were going to draw blood. Then, a small square is drawn on the forearm. The appearance of small red spots in this area is a warning sign, because it may indicate a deficiency of platelets — cells responsible for blood clotting. Whenever the Tie Test is positive, the patient must have a blood count.

After the lasso test, dengue is classified as type A (not serious), B, when there is a risk of severity, a group that includes pregnant women, the elderly or babies with a positive test or anyone who has tested positive in the lasso test. . When dengue is type C, in which the blood count shows platelet deficiency, the patient is admitted to the UPA and referred to another hospital, if necessary. Group D refers to dengue hemorrhagic fever.

According to Carvalho, blood test results take around 3 hours to come out and are responsible for delaying care and increasing the queue. Today, she says, the UPA received new equipment to perform the rapid homogram, which should reduce the result time to 30 minutes.