In two months, two people with hepatitis A died in Caracas

The cases of hepatitis A proliferate in various states of the country while the health authorities are silent. Although he always saw cases of infection Julio Castro, a doctor of infectious diseases at the Metropolitan Polyclinic, received a greater number of patients this year. The same thing happened to their colleagues, but there are no official figures to know the figures accurately.

What is known with certainty, is that in the first half of 2018, two people died Caracas produced disease which ignited the liver . The first, says Castro, died in 1945 in Policlínica Metropolitana . The second, a doctor and professor at the Central University of Venezuela ( UCV ) from the School Vargas died in June.

Each July 28 the World Day of Hepatitis is commemorated. This Saturday, Venezuela lives with a warning of rebound cases of hepatitis A and with the report of two deaths.

Hepatitis A is a viral infection transmitted by fecal-oral ingestion of foods or contaminated beverages or by contact with secretions an infected person by the virus

[19659002] "(These two deaths) are extremely rare .This is striking and indicates that something is happening.Normally, a patient died per 100,000 cases, but two deaths occurred in a single semester, "says Castro.

He explains that both patients died of hepatitis . fulminant a sudden failure of the function of liver and this occurs very rarely. The World Health Organization (WHO ) calculates that 99% of patients with hepatitis A recover completely after a period of one year. month or a month and a half However, the agency says that "a very small proportion of cases may die" for this reason.

Castro states that doctors "see more cases than we usually see." However, insists that the Department of Health is responsible for reporting the number of hepatitis A cases and confirming whether the number of cases is higher in 2018 "Who has to say that there has been more cases of hepatitis for the state, but the epidemiological bulletin is not available", has he said about the report. from Min-Health that was last published in May 2017. "Without the data, we can not say whether there is an epidemic ] ] or an endemic disease which is increasing. "

Multiplication of cases

Mercedes Fraile lives in an urbanization in Calabozo state Guárico ] where the cases of hepatitis A have multiplied since April From this year first he came to a neighbor, then to a friend, then to his sister-in-law and his nephew and, later, to his cousin's son.

This week Mercedes was tested for lab and verified that it is also infected with the virus . Dark urine and altered transaminase values ​​confirmed the diagnosis .

In the region, the supply water is almost continuous.However, Mercedes insists that the quality of the water is not the same and that the liquid often does not come out colorless pipes. "Here, no one has alerted or warned of the situation for people to take their p revisions, "he lamented

" In the case of urbanizations (like Mercedes) or schools it is easier to determine what was the cause. It is perhaps because there are problems with the water that reaches the houses of a specific block or because in the kindergarten a teacher changed diapers for a child and did not wash his hands ", Explained Castro.