The Ministry of Health will distribute the dengue vaccine to another 154 Brazilian municipalities. The announcement was made this Wednesday (27). Until then, 521 municipalities had been selected to receive the doses and begin vaccination against the disease in the public network for children and adolescents aged 10 to 14 years.
According to the ministry, the following health regions were covered by the expansion: Central (ES), Betim (MG), Uberaba (MG), Uberlândia/Araguari (MG), Recife, Apucarana (PR), Grande Florianópolis, Aquifer Guarani (SP ), Metropolitan Region of Campinas (SP), São José do Rio Preto (SP) and São Paulo.
Data from the ministry indicate that, to date, 1,235,119 doses have been sent to states and municipalities since the start of vaccination against dengue. Of these, 534,631 were registered as applied, while 700,488 have not yet been registered. Of all 521 municipalities that received the vaccine, 13 did not send data to the federal government.
Furthermore, 668 thousand doses are close to expiry date, scheduled for April 30th. The director of the Public Health Emergency Department and the Public Health Emergency Operations Center for Dengue and other Arboviruses (COE-Dengue), Márcio Garcia, detailed the scheme to expand the municipalities covered.
“We know that there are a number of these doses that have not been applied. We cannot let these doses expire, we need to use them. Faced with this, the Ministry of Health came up with a solution: redistribute, within the federated units, that is, within the states, to municipalities that have not yet been covered.”
According to Garcia, redistribution to municipalities within the states themselves will be regulated by a technical note published today. Two federated units do not have municipalities to relocate the doses received: the Federal District, due to a local characteristic, and Mato Grosso do Sul, covered in its entirety.
“The solution we found was to concentrate the doses close to expiry in these two federated units and, to facilitate logistics, send everything to a single state. We chose Amapá, considering the number of doses we will have, the concentration of the population in the capital and the number of municipalities the state has, not to mention the epidemiological situation itself, which justifies this relocation.”
New shipment
Also according to Garcia, the ministry received a new shipment of doses against dengue — the first purchased, as the previous one was donated by the manufacturer. In total, 930 thousand doses will be distributed to the 521 municipalities previously selected and to the 154 now covered by the expansion.
“We will send part of these doses to replace those that were relocated in municipalities initially covered. This way, we will guarantee the continuity of vaccination in places where the dose is now due and will be redistributed. And we will also guarantee doses for those municipalities that are vaccinating well. The idea is that the municipality where the dose is running out will receive more to continue the vaccination strategy”, he explained.
“We decided to follow the list that was agreed with representations from states and municipalities. We follow the order and will guarantee the distribution of doses to cover these regions. The idea is to send new doses, doses with an appropriate expiration date to these locations and, with this, cover an additional 154 municipalities in vaccination against dengue”, he concluded.
Source: CNN Brasil
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