UPAs in the capital are full due to dengue fever and flu cases – 04/11/2024 – Balance and Health

Waiting for care for eight hours, Gleice Miquele reported headache, joint and eye pain on Wednesday night (10), at the UPA (Emergency Care Unit) Jaçanã, in the north of the capital of São Paulo. In the same place was Solange Garcia, who had been accompanying her husband with dengue symptoms for more than five days — the search for help happened because the man could no longer eat and was having difficulty walking.

“I only know it’s dengue because we did the rapid pharmacy test on him,” said Garcia. She and her husband waited for more than three hours for assistance.

Near them, Valéria Barbosa was lying on two benches in the same unit, also awaiting treatment. Alone, she spoke confusedly, but said she had a fever, body aches and a cough for a few days. The patient sought help because she was unable to work.

A resident of Vila Mazzei, a neighborhood neighboring Jaçanã, the case of Juliana Melo, present in the same unit, was different. She had flu-like symptoms, such as cough, runny nose, body ache, headache, and fever for two days. “I took syrup and paracetamol, but I still feel a lot of pain in my back, a hot mouth and discomfort in my eye.”

Among the three units visited by the report, UPA Jaçanã was the one with the most patients, despite the separation for classification of flu and dengue symptoms at the time of screening. The overcrowding was so great that, outside, patients gave up trying to seek care, as is the case of Laís Viana, a resident of the same neighborhood.

“I’ve had symptoms such as headache, joint pain and fever since Sunday, but I didn’t seek care before because I knew it was like that. I only came because the pain is getting worse,” he said outside the unit, about to give up on the care and fearing that they might end up contracting another disease there. “We come home with one thing and return home with another, I’m afraid of passing something on to my little daughter.”

Around 25 kilometers separate the Jaçanã unit, in the north zone, from another UPA visited by SheetTito Lopes, in Vila Americana, in the east of the city.

On Wednesday night, the east zone unit registered a greater demand for care due to dengue symptoms and had an exclusive queue for those symptomatic of the disease and a tent right at the entrance.

Between consultation, medication and even transfer to a health center, Vanessa da Silva Luz had been at UPA Tito Lopes for more than five hours. Since last week she has been seeking assistance, but it was in the last three days that she began asking for a daily test to measure the amount of platelets in her blood. Severe dengue is suspected.

“I think they just didn’t send me to the tent because I came in a transferred ambulance,” says Luz, a resident of Jardim Helena who, despite having undergone different tests for dengue, did not receive a positive result for the disease. She was awaiting a new blood test result to find out whether or not she would be admitted to the unit.

Outside, in the tent set up to treat suspected and confirmed cases of arbovirus, patients complained about the delay in accessing the test results. Having had dengue symptoms for two weeks, Alex Ikenaga said that the service at the unit was quick, but the response whether or not to confirm his problem was taking a long time.

“They said that the normal time to access the exam was three hours, but there are people here who have been waiting for more than six. I have been waiting for more than two hours”, says the man.

Three weeks after the first visit of Sheet, the Jaraguá UPA, in the north of the city, recorded a lower flow of patients. The majority were suspected of dengue. A resident of Jardim Paulistano, Karina Pereira had had symptoms for a week and was at the unit for the second day in a row — this one, to collect the results of the exam, which took more than 2 hours.

“I went through the medication here yesterday and, from a distance, I can say that most of the people who were being medicated were suspected of having dengue, because they were all taking the same medication that had been prescribed to me, serum with dipyrone”, says Pereira.

Having had a fever, cough and body pain for a week, Juliana Nascimento, resident of Jaraguá, sought the unit for another reason: she was suspected of having the flu. “I even went to work, but I had to leave early because I couldn’t stand it,” she said. She had been waiting for care for five hours and was one of the few suspected cases of respiratory infections.

The report contacted the Municipal Health Department about the delay in service at UPAs Jaçanã, Jaraguá and Tito Lopes, but did not receive a response until the publication of this report.