Fiocruz supports international campaign for the control and prevention of Chagas disease

On World Chagas Disease Day (4/14), Fiocruz supports and participates in the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) campaign with the release of a video, produced by the CUIDA Chagas Project (Evandro Chagas National Institute of Infectious Diseases/Fiocruz), in partnership with the Organization. With the theme It is time to integrate the care for Chagas disease into Primary Health Care, this year's campaign talks about the importance of basic health services to ensure the right to health of the affected people and communities.

Fiocruz's Mourisco Castle will be specially illuminated for today, in green and brown colors, in allusion to the disease that affects between 6 and 8 million people throughout the world, mainly vulnerable populations in our region, where more than 75 million people are at risk of contracting the disease.

Other initiatives by the Institution were the signing, this morning (4/14), through the Institute of Drug Technology (Farmanguinhos/Fiocruz), and the German multinational Bayer, of a Memorandum of Understanding that establishes the bases for assessing a future cooperation agreement for the supply of Nifurtimox to the Brazilian government.

The drug, produced by Bayer, is recommended, according to the Clinical Protocol and Therapeutic Guidelines for Chagas Disease No. 397, of 2018, for the etiological treatment, in children and adolescents in the indeterminate chronic form and, in acute cases, for any age group, in situations where Benznidazole is not adequately tolerated. The obtaining of Nifurtimox is currently only possible through an agreement between the World Health Organization (WHO) and Bayer, with no direct supply to the country, which makes its acquisition difficult.

This Friday also featured two special sessions at the Study Center of the Oswaldo Cruz Institute (IOC/Fiocruz). In the morning, it was held the lecture Chagas Disease in the Americas: Echoes of the PAHO meeting on the strategic review of the regional agenda, with Tania Araujo-Jorge, Director of the IOC. Mediation was in charge of Alejandro Hasslocher-Moreno, Researcher at INI/Fiocruz and International Coordinator of the Nhepacha Network (New Tools for the Diagnosis and Evaluation of Chagas Disease).

The Vice President of Research and Biological Collections at Fiocruz, Rodrigo Correia, participated in the opening panel.

In the afternoon, Wilson Oliveira Jr., Coordinator of the Reference Service in Chagas disease and Heart Failure at the University Cardiology Emergency Service of Pernambuco (PROCAPE, University of Pernambuco), addressed the topic Caring vs treating the patient: Impacts of the pandemic on healthcare. The mediation was in charge of Fernanda Sardinha Mendes, Researcher at INI/Fiocruz. The activity is part of the schedule of the XI Carlos Chagas Cycle of Lectures.