Death in Brazil

As spring approached and temperatures rose last week in southern Brazil, medical authorities cautiously expressed hope that the country's, and perhaps the hemisphere's, worst meningitis epidemic in history might be abating. But in the Sao Paulo area, where the disease has struck hardest, the death rate was still high. Estimates of the total number of cases there rose to 20,000 and deaths to as many as 3,000, but firm figures were unobtainable, partly because of censorship. In Porto Alegre, and in communities as far north as the Amazon, the disease was still on the increase.

Meningitis--inflammation of the parchment-like covering of the brain and spinal cord--was relatively uncommon in Brazil until 1970. Since then, there have been increasingly widespread epidemics reaching a peak during the winter month of June. Normally concentrated among slum children, the disease this year has struck a large proportion of adults. It also appears to have crossed the class barrier, attacking the more affluent residents of Sao Paulo. Some doctors have suggested that the 1974 microbes may be mutants that are a menace to those handling the dead. So as to reduce the number of those exposed to possible infection, at least one hospital in Sao Paulo is placing victims' bodies in metal cases that are welded shut before they are enclosed in coffins.

Although meningitis can result from infection by any of several different viruses and bacteria, the most virulent form is caused by the meningococcus, Neisseria meningitidis. This comes in four different breeds known as types A, B, C and D, only one of which is usually implicated in an epidemic. But Brazilian microbiologists believe that types A and C are rampaging simultaneously in the current outbreak, and doctors favor administering vaccines against both in a single inoculation.

Brazil produces no vaccine of its own; so far it is making do with 235,000 doses of type A vaccine imported from France and awaiting arrival of 300,000 type C doses from the U.S. That would hardly be enough to stem the meningitis tide. In Sao Paulo, of some 2 million children, only 75,000 have been inoculated so far, and it seems certain that many more metal cases and coffins will yet be needed before Brazil's epidemic ends.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.