DESCRIPTIVE ANALYSIS OF REPORTED CASES OF DENGUE INFECTION IN THE FIFTEENTH REGION HEALTH OF PARANÁ, BRAZIL

Dengue is the main cause of arboviral disease in the world. It is transmitted to humans by Aedes mosquitoes bite. His frequency and magnitude have increased in recent years, with more than 390 million infections occurring annually around the world, being Brazil responsible for more than 60% of the cases registered in the American continent. So far, in early 2018, there were more than 2000 probable cases of dengue in the state of Paraná, Brazil. Therefore, the aim of this study was to describe epidemiological aspects of dengue in the 30 municipalities of the 15th Region Health of Paraná, Brazil, from 2010 to 2016. The data were collected from Information System for Notifiable Diseases (SINAN) and organized in a Microsoft Excel sheet. A descriptive analysis was performed using the software R. A total of 65,535 cases of dengue were communicated, with a median annual case rate of 13,425 (first and third quartiles are, respectively, 1,744.5 and 15,300 cases per year). Although this median, the distribution is far from the uniform, this shows seasonality, being from December to June, the period with the highest number of notifications, and 2013, the year with the highest number of cases. The year with lowest number was 2016, which coincides with the outbreak of Zika virus in Brazil that is a possible cause for this, since the viruses compete for the same vector. The notifications of dengue cases were verified in all of the 30 municipalities, with women between 20 and 46 years of age being the most affected. Among this reported cases, 54% (35,564) were confirmed, mostly by laboratory diagnosis (72%), of these, 19 evolved to death, as a direct consequence of dengue. Of these cities, 15 (50%) remained in an epidemic state (>300 cases/105 inhabitants) for at least 3 years, whose 8 were among the 9 cities in the 15th Region Health chosen for vaccination. Altogether, these municipalities comprised about 90% of all cases of dengue in the study period. These data are consistent with the epidemiological scenario observed in Paraná state and confirm the chosen vaccine approach by the same, which prioritizes municipalities with high incidence and dengue death and individuals ranging from 15 to 27 years old, who are the most affected by this infection.