Deaths by COVID-19 in a hospital from a city from Legal Amazon region: what lessons could be learned?

Objective: Describe the epidemiology of COVID-19 deaths within a hospital in the Amazon region in a period of 64 days, which corresponds to the growth curve of the COVID-19 first-wave pandemic in 2020. Method(s): The data were obtained from medical records of 152 deaths registered for adults and elderly hospitalized. The data were also compared with the number of deaths in previous years during the same period studied to assess the impact of the pandemic on this hospital. The study also assesses the impact of intra-hospital transfers, accounting for the number of times patients who died performed transfers between sectors of the hospital. Result(s): During the period analyzed, there was an increase in deaths compared to the previous years. The majority of dead patients were male, aged between 34 and 96 years. The deaths were associated comorbidities such as arterial hypertension, diabetes mellitus, and kidney disease. The SARS-CoV-2 infection was confirmed in 91 cases. Among them, 15 individuals were admitted without conditions related to SARS-CoV-2 infection;they had a three-fold higher number of hospital transfers than those admitted with SARS-CoV-2 infection symptoms. Sixteen patients with SARS-CoV-2 infection developed respiratory symptoms just after hospitalization. The diagnostic exam for SARS-CoV-2 infection was performed on average 4 (+/- 6) days after the onset of symptoms and 6 (+/- 6) days after admission, and the average time from the onset of respiratory symptoms to death was 4 (+/- 6) days. Conclusion(s): These data suggest the high presence of hospital infection by SARS-CoV-2 in the Brazilian Amazon region, which may be related to the number of sectorial transfers, delay in confirming the diagnosis, and lack of management. We report a serious public health problem, as it demonstrates the fragility of healthcare institutions in the hospital environment.Copyright © 2023 Faculdade de Medicina de Ribeirao Preto - U.S.P.. All rights reserved.

Panorama of Peruvian Secondary Education Teachers Trained in ICT Use Before COVID-19 Pandemic

In order to determine the panorama of secondary education teachers who received training in ICT use before the transition to e-teaching due to the COVID-19 pandemic in Peru, this study is presented with a quantitative, descriptive and trending approach. For this, three Surveys to Peruvian Teachers (ENDO) carried out by Ministerio de Educación del Perú before the pandemic, in 2014, 2016 and 2018 were analyzed. The total of secondary education teachers who participated in each year, respectively, were 3710 (78.5% = urban, 21.5% = rural), 3986 (81.9% = urban, 18.1% = rural) and 6118 (85.3% = urban, 14.7% = rural). After the analysis, it can be concluded that number of teachers trained in 2014 decreased in 2018 that classroom-based modality was the predominant one in these trainings, and Amazon region is the one that presents the most worrying figures. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

Antiviral Plants from Marajó Island, Brazilian Amazon: A Narrative Review.

Diseases caused by viruses are a global threat, resulting in serious medical and social problems for humanity. They are the main contributors to many minor and major outbreaks, epidemics, and pandemics worldwide. Over the years, medicinal plants have been used as a complementary treatment in a range of diseases. In this sense, this review addresses promising antiviral plants from Marajó island, a part of the Amazon region, which is known to present a very wide biodiversity of medicinal plants. The present review has been limited to articles and abstracts available in Scopus, Web of Science, Science Direct, Scielo, PubMed, and Google Scholar, as well as the patent offices in Brazil (INPI), United States (USPTO), Europe (EPO) and World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). As a result, some plants from Marajó island were reported to have actions against HIV-1,2, HSV-1,2, SARS-CoV-2, HAV and HBV, Poliovirus, and influenza. Our major conclusion is that plants of the Marajó region show promising perspectives regarding pharmacological potential in combatting future viral diseases.

Sustainability in Higher Education Institutions in the Amazon Region: A Case Study in a Federal Public University in Western Pará, Brazil

Sustainable development (SD) in higher education has occupied the agenda over recent decades. Higher education institutions make efforts to promote sustainability in education, curriculum, research, outreach, and campus operations. This article aims to analyze the level of implementation of sustainability in higher education in the Amazon. The specific objectives of this paper are to identify the curriculum greening (CG) characteristics in institutional development plans (IDPs) and to analyze the perceptions of students from a higher education institution in the Amazon region about sustainability. It follows a qualitative approach, with documentary research and questionnaires applied to students. Analysis content was used in the data analysis. The main findings are the presence of some CG characteristics in institutional documents that were analyzed as a commitment to the transformation of society–nature relations, contextualization, disciplinary order, democracy, theory and practice, students as knowledge protagonists, cognitive aspects, alternative scenarios, and methodological adequacy. The results show that commitment to sustainability cannot just be a declaration of good intentions. It is essential to discuss the ways of implementing sustainability in the academic environment, as it implies changes in epistemological, political, and social conceptions.

Variation of Drinking Water Consumption Due to the Health Emergency of SARS-CoV-2 Through Dynamic Modeling in Macas City, Amazon from Ecuador

The consumption of drinking water in the populations in the last 20 years has varied for different reasons, thus, it is necessary to determine its behavior for sustainable use of the resource. The objective of this work was to present the variation in drinking water consumption during the Sars-Cov-2 health emergency through dynamic modeling in the city of Macas in the Amazon region of Ecuador. The integrated moving average autoregressive model was used for the study (ARIMA), predicting the behavior of drinking water consumption for the year 2021 in the different neighborhoods of the city and relating this result with socioeconomic variables. The prediction for the year 2021 presented a decrease of 0.21% in the volume consumed compared to 2020, in April 2021 an increase of 85.21% was observed compared to the consumption of 2019, which can be attributed to the effects of the pandemic. The highest water consumption occurred in the cluster of neighborhoods with the highest population density, medium-high socioeconomic status, and high availability of basic services. The study aims to provide a valid alternative for decision-making in the framework of a health crisis, as well as possible conflicts in vulnerable areas in the face of the pandemic that affects the entire world. © 2021, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Food Systems and Health: Prospects for Hope in the Brazilian Chaos?

There are several other pandemics, such as NCDs, obesity and climate change that have been ongoing for a while and are now being severely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Are we going to use this convergence as an opportunity to tackle the systemic structures that have been fertile ground for the new COVID-19 pandemic to arise, alongside the older ones? This article will reflect upon the above through a closer look into the intersections between the questions that concern food systems, climate change, health politics and power relations with examples from the Brazilian context. We need inspired, inclusive and compassionate responses to bridge the current mismatch between the size of the problem and the response to it.