By 2025-01-17T05:00:00+00:00 BRAZIL: The Ministry of Transport has signed an agreement for the transfer of 15·5 km of moribund railway to the municipality of Campina Grande for the development of a light rail service The R$170m project covers the reconstruction of a cross-city section of the 1 000 mm gauge Transnordestina railway through Campina Grande Running on a broadly north-south alignment the proposed light rail route would serve 10 stops serving schools hospitals and the Presidente João Suassuna Airport An interchange hub is to be built at the former Nova rail station in the centre Works are scheduled to begin in the second half of this year R$100m is to be provided by the Ministry of Transport and the remainder of the funding would come from the municipality ‘This is a project that has been in the works since 2021 with technical studies and planning for the use of rails for urban transport We are now taking the first step towards offering an efficient and modern solution for mobility in our city’ BRAZIL: Construction of a three-line tram network in the coastal city of Salvador This follows the state government’s approval for the 36∙4 km project on June 14 and the opening of contractors’ tenders on June 4 .. BRAZIL: Federal development bank BNDES has agreed to fund studies for a 22·8 km light rail line linking Centro Cívico in Curitiba with Afonso Pena International Airport in neighbouring São José dos Pinhais A contract for BNDES to provide R$12·5m to fund the technical-operational BRAZIL: The state government of Bahia has approved the call of tenders for the construction of a three-line light rail network in Salvador totalling 36 km at an estimated cost of R$3·6bn The first 16·6 km line would link Calçada in the centre of the conurbation .. Site powered by Webvision Cloud O endereço abaixo não existe na globo.com The temperature was already soaring when mosquito control agents fanned out one morning amid a maze of crumbling brick homes on the edge of this lakeside city ideal habitat for the mosquito that spreads the Zika virus an agent found water being stored in a broken washing machine She drew a sample into a pipette and held it up to the sun All around were places where water could pool and the enemy could lay its eggs: old cinderblocks Everything would have to be drained or treated with larvicide There are thousands of homes like this one in the sprawling Three Sisters neighborhood of Campina Grande and thousands of neighborhoods like this one across a country of 200 million Brazil’s government has few options besides sending teams to every infested region to hunt down and kill the insects that carry the virus and experts fear that this time it is an unwinnable fight The agents inspecting the home with the washing machine were especially concerned because an 18-year-old living there was pregnant The virus has already caused more than 1,600 birth defects in Brazilian infants “We see on the news that there are many people getting sick,” she said But most people with Zika don’t experience any symptoms to check that her fetus is developing normally Aedes aegypti most likely arrived in Latin America from its native Africa on slave ships in the late 18th century and has been spreading deadly viruses ever since Brazil's first assault on the species came early last century in response to recurring epidemics of yellow fever that had claimed tens of thousands of lives brought commerce to a halt and emptied cities of those who could flee Brazil’s government declared war on the species deploying legions of public health workers to carry out house-to-house searches spray pesticides and eradicate the pools of standing water where the mosquito breeds internationally led crusade against the mosquito— was waged in ways that would not be tolerated today It was a dictatorial and highly intrusive operation with fumigators sometimes entering houses by force The weapon of choice was the infamous pesticide DDT which was effective against the mosquito but was later found to have toxic effects on wildlife and human health international health authorities declared Brazil free of Aedes aegypti most of the continent had achieved the same success But then governments relaxed their efforts the virus-toting mosquito is responsible for hundreds of deaths a year in Brazil from dengue and chikungunya Experts say the chances of beating the species are even lower now than they were 50 years ago demographic shifts have multiplied the kinds of habitat where the mosquito thrives and infrastructure development has not kept pace with population growth Millions of people lack plumbing and store water in open containers that make ideal breeding sites Even emptying or covering standing water cannot guarantee extermination of the mosquito the country is in the midst of its most crippling recession in decades and a political crisis that has seen the president impeached and much of Congress and the new Cabinet mired in allegations of corruption the federal government stopped shipping larvicide — a key weapon against mosquitoes -- to some of the places hardest hit by the Zika epidemic who oversees mosquito abatement in Campina Grande said the shortages lasted for months and became so acute that health workers started experimenting with alternatives such as using household bleach and small fish to kill insect larvae in water storage tanks and drainage canals Oliveria lamented that she does not have the authority government backing or resources that were available to her predecessors in the 1940s and 1950s Even if the country managed to eradicate the mosquito the risk of its returning is higher than ever given the movement of people and goods that has come with globalization “It’s just a completely different world now,” said Stan Cope president of the American Mosquito Control Assn Long accused of neglecting the threat posed by dengue and chikungunya Brazilian officials are eager to show they are taking Aedes aegypti seriously health authorities have set up command centers with banks of phones and computers to field queries from a fearful public and dispatch crews to mosquito infestations Their slogan: “A mosquito is not stronger than an entire country.” Officials insist the strategy is yielding results as new Zika infections have fallen significantly in recent months The health minister recently declared that the risk of visitors contracting the virus during the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro was “almost zero.” that the decline in Zika cases could partly reflect seasonal changes in the mosquito population which drops in the colder months of the Southern Hemisphere winter Some researchers believe that the epidemic in Brazil may already have peaked and could burn itself out in a few years as more people build up resistance through exposure to the virus But as long as there is Aedes aegypti in the country Critics complain that many of the government’s tactics against the mosquito — sending soldiers into neighborhoods to hand out leaflets about the virus for instance — are more show than substance a historian who has written about Brazil’s mosquito wars said the government isn’t doing enough to address the poverty and poor sanitation that have long allowed mosquitoes to thrive in the northeast Throughout the region’s vast urban slums and arid hinterlands residents hoard water in rooftop tanks and other uncovered containers in a constant battle against unreliable water supplies Many do not have access to the sewage system “The government wasn’t worried about this 50 years ago and the government is repeating the same mistake today,” Magalhaes said it is a race to get Alessandra de Sousa Amorim’s four daughters in and out of the bathroom before the faucets run dry The area is without running water for three days out of the week There was a loud shriek when one girl was left with a head full of shampoo and no water to rinse it off The family stores water in a backyard shed for such occasions Homes don’t have screens on the doors or windows “I’m not going to stop buying food in order to buy repellent,” said Amorim when she was pregnant with her fifth child rash and joint pain — telltale symptoms of a Zika infection It took her a moment to realize that the doctor was tearing up a condition known as microcephaly that is one of the most visible defects caused by the Zika virus This story was reported with a grant from the United Nations Foundation Credits: Produced by Lily Mihalik and Andrea Roberson Parece que a página que você está procurando não está disponível This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks The action you just performed triggered the security solution There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase You can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked Please include what you were doing when this page came up and the Cloudflare Ray ID found at the bottom of this page A company from Campina Grande is exporting data base systems and is keeping a close relationship with the university Some twenty years ago few people would have believed that Campina Grande a municipality with mild climate some one hundred and thirty kilometers from the city of João Pessoa would turn itself into a technology center Two people from Pernambuco State and a Canadian believed that they could professors at the Federal University of Paraíba (UFPB) founded a small information technology consulting firm in the town who had moved there in order to study electronic engineering which shortly after being launched would direct itself towards the development of software a supplier of data bank solutions and the electronic management of documents (GED) it has a large client base in Brazil and also exports to Spain and is about to close a very large deal with China The company has a technological agreement – with the support of the Ministry of Science and Technology (MCT) and of the Technology Park Foundation of Paraíba (PaqtcPB) – with the Institute of Software at the Chinese Academy of Science (Iscas and is developing a version of its own data bank “The product will be ready sometime between 2003 and 2004” the president of the Administrative Board and the company’s Marketing Director The selling of software and information technology solutions abroad already accounts for provides an important percentage of the company’s income “Of the estimated income for the year 2002 out of a total of R$ 2.3 million around 20% will come from exports” who purchased some of the company shares from his brother and from Mr “Our products and related questions have been the themes of close to twenty theses and dissertations” Most of the authors of these pieces of work are collaborators or ex-collaborators with the company whose staff includes four master’s degrees two currently doing a master’s and twenty five graduates who have dedicated themselves to the development of software and technical support Each year the company hires four trainees from the seventh and eighth semesters of the computer science course on the Campina Grande campus of UFPB which last year gained its independence and is now known as the Federal University of Campina Grande (UFCG) many of these trainees become effective members of the company – and those who do not stay end up carrying the name of the Light Infocon company to where ever they go the evolution of the company has been linked to the development of the technological profile of the town which each June receives close to one million visitors for the festival known as “the largest Saint John Festival in the world” has more than one hundred enterprises involved with high technology it was recognized as the only Latin American representative on the list of ten global tech cities in the weekly North American news magazine Born within the policy of an internally reserved market had a lot of success with its software tools for the Unix operational system which experienced enormous growth in companies large banks and in government organs beginning in the 80’s a piece of software for controlling printers In 1997 the product would gain the prestigious Top of the World Award from the North American magazine SCO World in the category of printing systems management for Unix and TCP-IP networking (the Internet protocol) the expansion of the Windows operating system into the corporate market and the dissemination of the commercial use of the Internet would present new challenges to the company “We needed to invest in the assimilation of new tendencies” During 1994 Infocon incorporated at that time Light Software a software company in the city of Brasilia that had also been working with products for the Unix and DOS operational systems being made up of systems analysts coming from the Federal Capital The main shareholder was Jairo Fonseca da Silva who is the current Director President of Light Infocon The two companies had already been partners: one of their common projects was the development of the AGIX software (for communication between machines using Unix and DOS) as well as the development of modules of the first version of the data bank named LightBase with 1.4 million code lines (the sotfware formation) was more than ten times larger – and much richer – than the original version with a little more than 120,000 lines among the software’s users are the Brazilian and Spanish Federal Police the cosmetics company Natura and the Bradesco bank the LightBase does not reach the level of being a direct competitor to the international giants of the data base segment Oracle – it is before Oracle’s level and a complement for these applications What differentiates the technology of the major part of the products offered to the market is the versatility and facility in the formation of data base projects over very short periods of time Focusing abroad In order to grow beyond the plain on which it is currently situated which throughout its history has had four projects supported by the Financier of Studies and Projects (Finep) is concluding its most recent: the adaptation of LightBase for the Chinese market and the development of a tool that reduces the time scale for this process to only a few days being adequate for the translation of the manuals and the screen libraries This is very helpful for conquering new markets the company received investments from the National Economic and Social Development Bank (BNDES) and from Pernambuco S.A – a private risk capital company directed towards the development of the Northeast region and made up of around one hundred entrepreneurs from the state of Pernambuco “Now our objective is not to limit ourselves to raising financial resources; we want partners who can commercially support us in Brazil and abroad.” © Revista Pesquisa FAPESP - All rights reserved Alba Batista conducted what has become a routine procedure: a weekly neurological exam of an infant born with microcephaly a birth defect that leaves newborns with abnormally small heads “Fridays are always difficult for me,” said Batista p.p1{margin:0px;font:11px lucida sans unicode;color:#bdbdbd;-webkit-text-stroke:#bdbdbd}span.s1{font-kerning:none} the mosquito-borne Zika virus broke out in this impoverished northeast region of Brazil producing a surge in microcephaly cases linked to the virus and spreading the disease to more than 60 countries Still unknown is why Zika has had such a devastating effect in Brazil where the government estimates approximately 2,000 infants have been born with what is known as Congenital Zika Syndrome — a series of disorders that can include but is not limited to microcephaly USA TODAY visited this city at the epicenter of the outbreak to examine how a team of health professionals and public officials have combined research treatment and support to understand the illness and mitigate its effects Though the World Health Organization announced this month that Zika is no longer considered a "Public Health Emergency of International Concern," communities like Campina Grande still struggle to deal with fallout from the health crisis a year later In an area where many expectant mothers can barely afford insect repellent and with only limited federal government support Each new birth exacts a heavy emotional toll on the front-line doctors “Another one,” Batista sighed after the infant's exam “That’s the 124th baby I’ve seen this year.” An alarming upsurge in microcephaly cases a year ago sent doctors in Brazil scrambling for answers Paraiba state averaged five microcephaly births per year confirmed the presence of Zika in two of her patients’ amniotic fluid a key breakthrough in establishing the link to microcephaly there was a fear of the unknown,” said Luzia Pinto our concern was finding enough beds in the intensive care unit in the hospital The health specialists set up a microcephaly unit in a wing of a local hospital The staff of five grew to 12 to include specialists a psychologist to counsel mothers and a gynecologist to discuss family planning the doctors struggled to provide mothers with answers about what the disturbing brain scans would mean for their children’s future I woke up and came to work in panic,” said Jeime Leal how are they dealing with this situation?’” it remains unclear whether they will be able to walk Some are not responding to visual or auditory stimulation and many are unable to sit up without assistance The list of health problems associated with these patterns of brain damage is extensive: partial paralysis of the limbs The hospital staff find that early stimulation appears to help ‘these babies won’t get out of bed,’” Melo said “But when the infants began to go through early stimulation .. they began to follow us and interact with us.” Doctors remain hopeful that the rigorous rehabilitation program will improve each child’s development “Congenital Zika Syndrome is a box of surprises,” said physiotherapist Leal something new which we didn’t know about before.” Some of the doctors also are involved in cutting-edge research working alongside Brazilian and American researchers co-published images in the medical journal Radiology showing the severity and extent of the brain damage associated with Zika the Brazilian Ministry of Health recently launched an investigation to determine whether Zika is acting alone or biological factors are at play that caused an explosion of cases of microcephaly in northeastern Brazil but not in neighboring countries such as Colombia Some doctors in Colombia believe the dramatically lower rates there are due to easier access to abortion than in Brazil where a debate about legalizing abortion in cases of Zika has reignited says the debate by activists on both sides of the issue is a distraction from the main problem — the babies already infected “Most people are interested in their causes,” she said "but nobody wants to take care of these mothers and the children who are already born." determining who is responsible for the babies has proved challenging Campina Grande is paying staff salaries at the microcephaly unit and the cost of medical exams Mayor Romero Rodrigues has pledged to allocate apartments in a new public housing project for women with babies enrolled in the treatment program “Campina Grande has needs that are really the country’s responsibility,” said Thiago Trapé a São Paulo-based researcher who is leading up ZikaLab a privately-funded initiative that will train primary-care workers to deal with Congenital Zika Syndrome “They have still been able to organize a model here Many impoverished mothers with babies in the treatment program can't afford diapers Doctors and the mothers solicit private donations to cover the cost of everything from high-tech medical equipment to colorful inflatable toys needed to stimulate development the newly installed conservative government is pushing a constitutional amendment that would cap public spending for the next 20 years to help reduce the budget deficit Health professionals around the country fear the result will be drastic cuts in health programs City health commissioner Pinto says the medical team’s tenacity and resourcefulness will continue to make the program successful even under challenging circumstances but the team suffers with every one of these children.” Single parents are common in Brazil where some studies show as many as 1 in 3 children from poor families grow up without their biological father but doctors on the frontline of the Zika outbreak say they are concerned about how many mothers of babies with microcephaly are being abandoned With the health service already under strain an absent father is yet another burden on mothers already struggling to cope with raising a child that might never walk or talk Ianka Barbosa was 7 months pregnant when she found out her child had microcephaly blames the break-up on her baby's abnormally small head and brain damage that doctors link to the Zika virus she contracted during pregnancy it was my fault the baby has microcephaly," said Barbosa wearing a blue dress and cradling tiny two-week old Sophia in a cramped bare brick house where she now lives with her parents in Brazil's northeast which overlooks a polluted stream on the edge of a poor neighbourhood Only Barbosa's father has a job doing occasional building work but avoids discussing microcephaly and blames Barbosa's parents for the break-up At a specialised microcephaly clinic in Campina Grande psychologist Jacqueline Loureiro works with mothers to help them cope with stress and trauma she says only 10 receive adequate financial or emotional support from their partners "At first many of the women say they have a partner but as you get to know them better you realise the father is never around and the baby and mother have effectively been abandoned," Loureiro said which she says is particularly strong in the northeast Few Brazilian jobs give enough flexibility for parents to better share the responsibility of looking after a child with special needs This is made even more difficult as parents must often travel for hours to visit the few specialised clinics operating in Brazil 20-year-old Rogerio dos Santos is one of only two fathers present he says he's shocked by the tales of fathers abandoning their children but says it has been hard to get time off at the gas station where he works Whereas the clinic runs a support group for the mothers there is no specific help offered for fathers Josemary da Silva pours a cold bath to relieve her son Gilberto from the relentless heat The five-month-old baby with microcephaly stops crying briefly as he is washed in a pale blue plastic tub first saw his son one month after he was born and has rarely visited since Two months ago he stopped contributing the $30 a month he had paid to help da Silva care for the child But what kind of love is this," she says as Gilberto starts to cry again UCL Department of Risk and Disaster Reduction Mosquitoes such as the Aedes species (e.g. Aedes Aegypti and Aedes Albopictus) are the natural carriers of the arboviruses which are deadly humans These vectors are known for transmitting several viruses to humans including Zika The Aedes species in particular are native to tropical and sub-tropical regions in the Global South (i.e Middle East & South East Asia) and prefer habitats that are close to human dwellings It should be noted that where these vectors remain native to an area – these deadly viruses also remain endemic posing a huge public health concern for humans at risk of exposure the Brazilian health authorities are actively working on preventing the spread of arboviruses and eliminating the vector the environmental health authorities in cities of Recife (State of Pernambuco) and Campina Grande (State of Paraiba) carry out rigorous surveillance campaign six times per year visiting many households across several neighbourhoods to in order treat infested properties and destroy breeding habitats the existing system suffers from paucity of spatially-referenced household surveillance data rich with urban and environmental characteristics – this is attributed to the current paper-based approach used by fieldworkers for collecting data which ultimately becomes prohibitively time-consuming to collate and transform into an electronic format if need surveillance analytics The existing system needs strong improvements and enhancements for automatic dissemination for the early detection for mosquito populations and levels of household infestation in Brazil researchers from Federal University of Pernambuco (Recife Brazil) & Federal University of Campina Grande (Campina Grande Brazil) are working closely with the UCL’s Centre for Digital Public Health & Emergencies (DPHE) team to develop a new and innovative system for assisting these environmental agents and managers in the identification of human settlements that pose a significant risk of becoming a hotspot for mosquito breeding in Brazil The goal is to develop an app that will support the rapid collection and surveillance efforts of mosquito-borne arboviruses in two cites: Recife and Campina Grande This innovative tool features two components that work in tandem with each other: The overarching vision for this system is to be implemented in a real-world setting in Brazil where transmission of mosquito-borne diseases is problematic This novel surveillance system brings together different sources of data ranging from as epidemiological household characteristics and spatial information collated seamlessly through the agent’s app into a big database will be used by the managers and stakeholders to make current & future predictions in real-time of the potential areas at significant risk of increased mosquito population a prototype of the platform is currently being piloted in a 2-month evaluation in Recife and Campina Grande It has already passed the initial phases and received excellent feedback and critical appraisal from agents managers and stakeholders from the health ministry through a series of focus groups While the platform is currently implemented in two small cities its technical capabilities are excellent allowing for scalability for increased coverage for surveillance since the technology behind the stack – backend on the server (i.e Heroku) and database allows for this service This system will therefore be able to provide critical support for all agents stakeholders and managers in resource management for treating human dwellings impacted by mosquitoes at the International Digital Public Health 2019 Conference in Marseille – DPHE researcher and app developer won the runner-up for the best innovation in research Her presentation was titled: “The ZIKA platform: an innovative system for the real-time surveillance & early detection of increased mosquito populations in Brazil” For the full story, check out our blog: https://tinyurl.com/yca6ds7k There are three peer-reviewed articles ranging from extreme online machine learning and geostatistical modelling techniques applied to historical mosquito-borne surveillance data shared by the Environmental health agency in Recife and Laboratório de Imunopatologia Keizo Asami (LIKA) in Federal University of Pernambuco ZIKA: A new system to empower health workers and local communities to improve surveillance protocols by E-learning and to forecast Zika virus in real-time in Brazil In Proceedings of the 2018 International Conference in Digital Health ZIKA Virus: Prediction of Aedes mosquito larvae occurrence in Recife (Brazil) using online extreme learning machine and neural networks Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Digital Public Health – DPH2019 Assessing the relationship between various climate risk factors & mosquito abundance in Recife the health agents rely on scanned maps to conduct their campaign of visits for treating infested households and destroying habitats As the area remains of off-the-grid there is no way to map the spatial distribution of these mosquitoes the DPHE team worked with Dr Sarah Wise from UCL CASA and the British Red Cross’ expert Katherine Robert-Hill and Jiumei Geo we delivered a GIS workshop to generate digital surveillance maps for one of the study sites at Campina Grande These were created to support the mapping and surveillance effort in such areas as the they currently rely on scanned maps but have no way of quantifying the spatial distribution of residential areas infested with mosquitoes For the full story, check out our blog: https://tinyurl.com/y6vlycaf the DPHE secured funding of value of £507,684 (NE/T013664/1) to conduct further research on the impacts of climate change on mosquito populations in Brazil The project is titled: Mosquito population modelling for early warning system and rapid public response by health authorities (MEWAR) The MEWAR is a trans-interdisciplinary project which will to bring together digital public health urban water/waste sanitation treatment technologies meteorology and climate modelling to one arena in order to evaluate the impacts of broader climatic and environmental changes on breeding habitats for mosquito-borne arboviruses in Northeast Brazil This project will be an international consortium bringing onboard renowned academics from Brazil Project Dates: 1st April 2019 to 31st May 2020 Principal Investigator in the United Kingdom: Professor Patty Kostkova Centre for Digital Public Health & Emergencies Institute for Risk and Disaster Reduction (UCL) Professor Tiago Massoni Aisha Aldosery (PhD Student) Centre for Engineering & Industrial Development Dr Anwar Musah Georgiana Birjovanu British Council Newton Fund (Reference number: 280860230) UKRI ESPRC IAA (Reference number: EP/R511638/1) Click here for more information about the Centre for Digital Public Health in Emergencies (dPHE) Follow us on twitter: @UCL_dPHE It is a priority for CBC to create products that are accessible to all in Canada including people with visual Closed Captioning and Described Video is available for many CBC shows offered on CBC Gem