Solon Brochado: You would’ve thought this kind of thing only happened in Romania, but it turns out vampires are a problem in Brazil as well. From 2003 to 2004, over 40 people have died from rabies transmitted by hematophagous bats in the North. It is quickly becoming a major public health issue for the region, specially since the Health Ministry says it doesn’t know how to handle the situation.

UPDATE: New Scientist picked up the story and has a report on the attacks, with the quality you’ve come to expect of them.

Bats multiply attacks in the Amazon

The number of people attacked by bats in the Amazon region has increased ninefold in two years. That’s what data from the Health Ministry show. In 2004, there were 8.258 agressions, while only 852 in 2003. And the number of deaths rose in last weeks.

The data was obtained after 21 people died in April 2004 due to an outbreak of rabies transmitted by the animal. There was, then, a concern from the health agencies to monitor the attacks on people.

The ministry admits the attacks aren’t new, but that there was no monitoring by state agencies, since they didn’t know the extent of the problem.

Between 2003 and 2004 there were 43 deaths, but there were more cases this year. On the affected States — Pará and Maranhão — the agressions were under-notified. Only after technicians went on the field the alarming data was uncovered.

In Pará, where the outbreaks began last year, there were 383 recorded agressions by bats to humans in 2003. The next year, after the deaths, there were 7.640 occurrences. In 2005, it’s already over 15 thousand. Maranhão had registered only 108 agressions in 2004. After this year’s outbreak, there are already over 1.100.

The last couple of victims of the hematophagous bats (that feed on blood) from the Demodus rotundus species are from Cândido Mendes (MA). They died about 40 days ago.

In the State, other four people died in Godofredo Viana and Carutapera. In Pará, Viseu was affected twice: there was a death in 2005 and six in 2004. This year, there were more 15 victims in Augusto Corrêa; last year, there were 15 in Portel.

To biologist wilson Uieda, from Unesp, doctor in ecology from Unicamp, the disease could become a serious public health issue because the North region is the last agricultural frontier yet to be explored in the country.

Uieda has a post-doctorate in Cornell University (USA) and was a scientifical consultant for a “National Geographic” documentary on bats.

To him, the Amazon is susceptible to the proliferation of rabies outbreaks due to the advance of cattle raising and “Pará is the front door to the region”.

“Pará is still accessible. My concern is with Amazonas because it is hard to work there. For now, the bat populations are small. There’s not enough food supply to make them grow. Introducing cattle will do that”, he says.

Uieda said the health agencies have to think “they’re dealing with people, and not with animals”. And that the outbreaks could be avoided if the government had given priority also to this form of transmission.

The Healt Ministry’s Transmissible Diseases Vigilance coordinator, Eduardo Hage Carmo, admits the 2004 and 2005 events “surpassed the detection capacity” of the agency, that is still studying a strategy to fight the infirmity.

According to Carmo, the federal government has been taking contention measures. One of them consists of training malaria agents to conduct interviews with the population and, this way, communicate the agressions to the health units.

Premeditated

Uieda says the outbreaks were announced, for people lived for over 40 years and stood the agressions to their animals and, eventually, to them. “Suddenly, a virus shows up in there and ends up affecting this relation”.

The Health Ministry asserts there’s still no way to fight the bat population. “In the Amazon region, there are small colonies, hence the greater difficulty. It doesn’t work to use the vampiricide paste. We still have no solution”, it says.