RIO DE JANEIRO – Brazilian public health authorities confirmed that three inhabitants of the Amazon state of Roraima have been infected by type 4 dengue, which is transmitted by a virus that has not been found in the country for 28 years.
The health secretary of Roraima state said that tests done in the Evandro Chagas Institute state laboratory have confirmed the presence of the virus in three of the four patients suspected of having caught it.
The Health Ministry had already alerted regional health departments nationwide on Wednesday about the need to take stronger measures against the illness, since a large part of the population has no immunological defense against this virus and therefore the possibility of an epidemic cannot be discarded.
The virus that carries type 4 dengue has been found for several years in 10 countries of the hemisphere, but Brazil has had no cases since 1982, with the result that most of the population has not developed defenses against the illness.
Besides threatening a population without immunological defenses, the contagion of the virus carrying type 4 dengue in people that have already suffered types 1, 2 or 3 could bring on hemorrhagic dengue, the most dangerous form of the disease.
Notable among the countries where the virus is present are Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela, all bordering on Brazil’s Amazon region. The Amazon state of Roraima shares a border with Venezuela.
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