Bubonic Plague: a brief history of changes to current situation in Brazil

Abstract

Plague is a globally distributed, zoonotic disease caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis. With recurrent epidemics since the Antique, the plague ravaged the population, producing demographic, political, cultural and religious incommensurables effects. Since 1894 in Brazil, the Plague began to get closer to the federal capital through the intense commercial trading. First the Porto city, in Portugal, was attacked by the disease, after that, some neighbors' countries of the South America, like Paraguay and Argentina, and, finally, Santos, in São Paulo coast, where, for the first time in history, the disease landed in national field, in October of 1899. Data registered since 1935 reveal that the period of most intensity in the occurrence of the disease prior the 70's, declining sooner after that, verifying isolated epidemics in the 1970s, in Bahia, and 1980s, in the states of Ceará and Paraíba. Since that time, all of the foci entered a period of relative inactivity, with few or no human cases. Despite the apparent control of the Plague, the reduction or discontinuity of the vigilance, the poverty, insalubrity, frequent and out of control deforestations, urbanization, and the climate changes that alters the rodents and fleas habitat causing disequilibrium in epidemiological chain, can become influence factors in the resurgent of cases in humans.