Dengue: aspectos epidemiológicos no município de Ipatinga, Minas Gerais, no período de 2007 a 2009

Abstract

Dengue has a major impact on public health worldwide and its growth has been observed in recent years in several parts of the world. This work was then developed to see the epidemiological situation in the city of Ipatinga located in the east of the state of Minas Gerais. As seen worldwide, we observed an increase in the number of dengue cases in the city of Ipatinga. The increase in case reports was also followed by increase in disease severity, with emergence of complicated-dengue and dengue hemorrhagic fever reports. Because of characteristics of the vector cycle, this disease is observed mainly in the rainy season, and once the mosquito has an urban habitat, where there are equivalent populations of men and women, there was no difference in incidence rates between genders. Dengue fever also seems to be unrelated to the societal level, affecting both rich and poor people. Although the data presented here are relevant, it should be noted that due to the use of a secondary database (SINAN), possible bias may have occurred, such as selection bias, not only by probable underreporting of cases and lack of standardization in obtaining information on all the variables that constitute the SINAN database, which can lead to measurement bias.