Near the border with Ecuador, the desert region of Piura is facing its worst health crisis since the pandemic, which has lifted Peru to the top of the countries with the highest mortality. In question, this time, the mosquito transmitter of dengue fever, attracted by the heavy rains caused by Hurricane Yaku which hit the region in March.
As of June 13, “we have 82 dead”, including 11 children, and more than 44,000 people infected in the department of Piura, assures the defender of the people César Orrego. These figures represent just over a third of the deaths (248) and infections (146,588) recorded nationally.
Since the reappearance of dengue fever in the country in 1990, this is the epidemic wave “the strongest”, underlines Valerie Paz Soldan, an expert in infectious diseases of the university Cayetano Heredia. The infection “went out of control”she warns, saying she fears that the virus is circulating “all year” in the country due to climate change and the El Niño weather phenomenon, which causes heavy rains.
“Little baby”
In terms of dengue fever, Peru has the second highest mortality rate in Latin America, after Brazil, up 365% compared to the average of the last five years, according to the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO). ).
The coastal area of the department of Piura is home to the majority of the region’s 1.8 million inhabitants. In Catacaos, an agricultural district, dengue is ravaging homes with tin roofs.
In one, Maria Francisca Sosa, 45, watches over her 93-year-old father. Slumped in a bed, an unfolded mosquito net by his side, the old man barely mutters when his daughter passes her hand over his forehead.
Since the virus knocked him down, we have to help him as if he were a “little baby, to feed him (…), buy him diapers”testifies this woman who lives with six other members of her family.
One after the other, all were affected by the virus. Faced with overcrowding in health centres, they had to go into debt to be able to call on a private doctor and buy medicine.
Influx of sick people
Hurricane Yaku brought heavy rains and flooding. Drinking water networks and sewers have been damaged, as well as mango and rice crops. The water was stored in open tanks, which increased, despite the fumigation operations, the breeding grounds of the Aedes aegypti mosquito, commonly known as the tiger mosquito.
In Catacaos, the football field is still waterlogged two months after the passage of the hurricane. Not far away, Teolinda Silva, 45, takes care of her son Gabriel, 27, bedridden and feverish. “Unfortunately I don’t have the money to take him to the hospital and have him seen. Right now I’m going through a tough time, there’s no work, there’s nothing”she laments.
This weekend, little FerMaria Ancajima was buried in Catacaos. Her condition suddenly worsened and she died shortly after being transferred to Lima. She was ten years old.
Sullana hospital, north of Catacaos, collapsed under the influx of sick people. “We have a huge deficit in human resources, our first level of attention has collapsed and we lack equipment and medicines”recognizes Luis Alfredo Espinoza Venegas, 44, one of the managers of the hospital center.