Infectious diseases along Brazil's Trans-Amazon highway surveillance and research

Abstract

Brazil's new Trans-Amazon highway has brought many road workers and settlers into contact with extensive and essentially uninhabited tropical regions of the country for the first time. This event has considerable medical significance. For one thing, relatively large numbers of people are being exposed to disease agents whose identity until now has been uncertain. For another, some of these people may be bringing with them human disease agents that are new to this area. Efforts to investigate both of these phenomena have been underway since 1971. They include an extensive search for arboviruses in human sera and in captured animaIs and birds; study of the hemorrhagic syndrome of Altamira; attempted isolation of enterobacteria and leptospira from humans and animaIs; a search for evidence of schistosomiasis; and attempted isolation of various protozoan parasites from captured animaIs. This article reports the initial results of this research.