By Bruno Aracaty a brazilian entrepreneur, co-founder of Colab.re and Sin Zika, both citizen to government engagement platforms. Follow him at @Baracaty
Crowdsourced data reveals that lack of water supply and infrastructure contributes to the development of the Aedes Aegypti and the Dengue and Zika viruses that it transmits.
In the early 1900’s, the Aedes Aegypti mosquito was already a problem in Brazil. At that time, the mosquito was a known vector for transmitting the Yellow Fever. According to the Brazilian Ministry of Health, in 1955 nation-wide measures focused on the contention of that virus managed to eradicate the mosquito from the country. Thirty years later, in 1986, the first Dengue virus epidemic, also transmitted by the Aedes Aegypti, was registered in the country. Now, again 30 years later, the Aedes Aegypti surges once more as a concern due to the fact that it’s also a vector for transmitting Chikungunya and Zika viruses.
Brazil and other tropical countries in Latin America have been fighting the mosquito and dealing with the viruses it transmits for years. The difference is that now the Zika virus outbreak is evolving rapidly and carrying a close correlation to microcephaly and Guillain-Barré syndrome. According to the Brazilian Ministry of Health, the number of reported cases of microcephaly only in the state of Pernambuco (the epicenter of the epidemic in the country) grew from an average of 8.6 yearly cases between 2010 and 2014, at a rate of 0.06 per live birth, to 646 cases in 2015, at a rate of 4.61 per live birth. Considering the whole country, the rate increased from 0.05 to 1 case per live birth.
According to the Secretary of Social Development of Pernambuco, a research with 209 mothers to babies born with the microcephaly revealed that 77% of them live in conditions below the poverty line. Going deeper in the data analysis shows that most of those families live in the periphery of Recife metropolitan area, where water supply is scarce and basic sanitation is precarious – the Coelhos neighborhood is an example of all those problems. Even when the target of such analysis is a more developed city in a more developed region, such as São Paulo in the southeast of the country, the neighborhoods more affected by the viruses transmitted by the Aedes Aegypti are poorer areas with those same water supply and basic sanitation issues: Penha, Brasilândia and Lajeado.
In February 2016, the City of São Paulo started using a platform called “Sem Dengue” (“Sin Zika” for Spanish-speaking countries) that offers apps for citizens to report probable Aedes Aegypti mosquito breeding areas and symptoms of whatever fever they have. This crowdsourced data helps governments better understand where the problems are and how citizens can actually help preventing and tackling the reproduction of this less-than-one-centimeter villain. The pictures posted by the people demonstrate clearly the inequalities and infrastructure shortcomings for sewage, waste collection, urban development and, specially, water supply.
It’s pretty straightforward and intuitive to link the recent draught problem in São Paulo – and the not-so-recent exact same issue in Pernambuco – with the whistleblowing spread of the mosquito vector. It just takes a few looks at what citizens have been posting on the “Sem Dengue” / “Sin Zika” platform to realize that people saving and storing water, mostly inadequately, as well as waste disposed irresponsibly by an uneducated population and not taken care by the public authorities and their contractors, are the key issues to the proliferation of these diseases.
São Paulo and other 50 cities throughout Brazil are using this crowdsourcing platform hoping to learn more about what and where are the problems, in order to have a closer oversight on the teams in charge and to be more efficient while taking action. The tool of symptom reporting enhances such analysis by creating a map overlay and by helping citizens be sent to the appropriate health facility. This kind of platform comes at a time when the Global emergency situation helps the whole society unite as one to combat the mosquito vector on one front, and the viruses on another front.
It’s time to learn who’s supposed to be involved in this fight, how it should be coordinated and what kind of commitment is needed. In my opinion, the society has a key role here both to identify the where and the what, as well as to follow the experts’ recommendations and spread the word. A Global cooperation is needed to accelerate researches, educate people and commit money to improve the long needed infrastructure investments.
Lastly, it is important to point out technology as the most important ally. When we created the “Sem Dengue” / “Sin Zika” platform, we thought about bringing citizens to collaborate, governments to learn and take action, and also media outlets, corporations, Non-Governmental Organizations and social movements to contribute with knowledge, research, educative content and communication. Everyone has to do their part. This is the only way to win this battle.
Visit http://semdengue.colab.re to learn more about this crowdsourcing platform.
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