Cities in RS with the most cases of dengue ask the Ministry of Health to review criteria for sending the vaccine

The definition of the cities that will receive 126,100 doses of the dengue vaccine continues to cause controversy among municipal political leaders in Rio Grande do Sul. This is because the six municipalities that will receive are not at the top of the cities with the most confirmed dengue cases in the world. state in 2024.

Currently, according to the monitoring panel of the State Department of Health (SES), Santa Rosa in first, São Leopoldo in second and Novo Hamburgo in third are at the top of the ranking of confirmed cases of the disease. São Leopoldo is still the city with the highest number of deaths recorded by the ministry this year, with 15 deaths.

Outside of the two cities in Vale do Sinos, Canoas is the municipality in the Metropolitan region with the most cases, with 2,141 confirmations, appearing in ninth place in the ranking. The critical situation made the City Hall set up a field hospital in front of the Boqueirão Emergency Care Unit to receive people with dengue symptoms.

The services began this Saturday and, in just the first two hours, more than 300 people had already visited the site. The current mayor of Canoas, Jairo Jorge, stated that the municipality sent a letter to the Ministry of Health requesting a review of the criteria for defining the cities that will receive doses of the vaccine.

“We demand an explanation from the Ministry of Health about the chosen criteria. As Canoas, which is in a much more serious situation than the region covered by the vaccines, did not receive the doses. The priority for defining the municipalities that receive vaccines should be the number of confirmed cases and deaths”, he highlighted.

Santa Rosa, the city with the highest number of confirmed cases, does not have a Municipal Health Department, but rather a foundation that manages the area, the Santa Rosa Municipal Health Foundation (Fumssar). The president, Délcio Stefan, highlighted that he had held a meeting with other municipal health secretaries in RS and with the SES to request more vaccines. “We were taken by surprise by the way vaccines were distributed, mainly because we did not consider the municipalities with the most cases. A joint formal referral was made to the Ministry of Health, asking for distribution criteria and the supply of more vaccines”, he announced.

In São Leopoldo, Mayor Ary Vanazzi highlighted that he was in Brasília and filed a vaccination request for the entire population of Rio Grande do Sul. “I found this vaccination announcement strange without including our population, given the serious numbers we have of dengue in the city. We are already forwarding a request to the ministry to include São Leopoldo in the next stage”, he pointed out.

The same request occurred in Novo Hamburgo, where mayor Fátima Daudt stated that it is not possible to identify clear criteria for the ministry’s definition, considering the definition as “questionable”. “It makes more sense to make the vaccine available where it is most needed, that is, where there are more cases and deaths recorded and, therefore, where it can save more lives. The Ministry of Health urgently needs to reevaluate its dose distribution criteria”, he emphasized.

Ministry of Health clarifies the criteria used

When contacted, the Ministry of Health reported in a note that the doses were distributed following a ranking established based on specific criteria. Among them, the folder cites the municipalities considered large (with a population greater than or equal to 100 thousand inhabitants) and with high dengue transmission in the last 10 years, including other cities in their health regions covered “regardless of population size”, ordered by the predominance of the DENV-2 serotype (recent reemergence). “Furthermore, the Ministry of Health has adopted measures to acquire new vaccines from the producing laboratory, which are conditioned on the possibility of production, which will allow the expansion of vaccination against dengue in the country”, added the note.

In RS, the six cities chosen were Porto Alegre, which will receive 72,898, Viamão, with 14,982, Alvorada, with 12,985, Gravataí, which will receive 16,425 doses, Cachoeirinha, 8,379 and Glorinha, with 463 doses. This Monday, a meeting will be held between teams from the Ministry of Health’s National Immunization Program and technicians from the State Health Surveillance Center (Cevs) to define details of the shipment of immunization agents and vaccination strategies.