Many countries have reported an increase in the incidence of pertussis, which has become a global public health concern. In this study, the epidemiology of pertussis in Brazil was assessed retrospectively using surveillance data gathered from case notification forms from 2007 to 2014. From 2007 to 2014, 80,068 suspected cases of pertussis were reported in Brazil. Of these, 24,612 (32 %) were confirmed by various criteria. The annual distribution of confirmed cases demonstrated a significant increase in incidence rate since 2012. A seasonal pattern in which cases occur most frequently between the end of spring and midsummer has been identified. Among the confirmed cases, 34.5 % occurred in infants aged 0–2 months, 22.4 % occurred in infants aged 3–6 months, 21 % occurred in children aged 7 months to 4 years, and 8 % were reported in adults >21 years. Of the confirmed cases, 47.2 % met only clinical criteria, 15.5 % met clinical and epidemiological criteria, and 36.6 % were confirmed in a laboratory. The overall case fatality rate was 2.1 %, reaching 4.7 % among infants aged 0–2 months. The complications most commonly reported in the notification forms were pneumonia, encephalitis, dehydration, otitis, and malnutrition. Of the confirmed cases, 23.1 % occurred in subjects who received at least 3 doses of the pertussis vaccine. Within this group, there were 1098 infants aged 7 to 15 months and 2079 children aged 16 months to 4 years. In 2012, 18 states did not achieve 95 % immunization coverage, a number that dropped to 10 and 6 in 2013 and 2014, respectively. Brazil’s main challenges in facing pertussis resurgence will be to offer the best quality medical attention to reduce mortality, to improve the infrastructure for laboratory diagnosis and to increase vaccination coverage. Additional studies to assess the effectiveness of the current vaccination schedule and basic research on the genetics and evolution of circulating B. pertussis strains are also needed.

Negative consequences of urban growing disparities usually lead to impressive levels of segregation, marginalization, and injustices, particularly in the context of climate change. Understanding the relations between urban expansion and social vulnerability has become extremely necessary for municipality management and sustainable urban development. Although the study of urbanization in Latin America (LA) has been well discussed, little attention has been given to how the population is affected by urban expansion-oriented movement after the 2008 economic crisis. Massive investments in infrastructure displaced the population to peripheral zones without adequate urban planning, which reflected in alteration in land use and land cover (LULC), followed by environmental impacts and public health issues caused by thermal discomfort, notably in semiarid regions. This paper aims to evaluate the effects of urban sprawl on the Teresina–Timon conurbation (TTC) area’s local population, located in Brazil’s northeast. Descriptive metrics (Moran’s I statistic and social vulnerability index) and orbital products derived from remote sensing—LULC and Land surface temperature (LST) maps—were applied. The results indicated that the housing program ‘My House My Life’ (PMCMV) had increased the values of land consumption per capita since 2009 significantly, showing a clear expanding trend. The gradual replacement of green areas by residential settlements resulted in an increased LST. The PMCMV program contributed substantially to a change in land use and land cover, which increased the extent of urbanized areas and changed the local microclimate.

Teresina-Timon conurbation (TTC) area is an example of urban agglomeration, situated in the semiarid environment of the northeast region of Brazil, which has shown an accelerated process of urban development over the last four decades (1985–2019). In this study, we developed a semi-automatic urban land mapping framework at the Google Earth Engine (GEE) platform to (a) evaluate spatiotemporal sprawl of the TTC area (1985–2018); and (b) quantify current urban fabric structures of TTC area (2019). The main empirical results demonstrate that the use of the Landsat historical dataset is a suitable option for generating consistent urban land maps across the years in semiarid environments. Teresina and Timon expanded, respectively, from 70.34 km² and 12.20 km² in 1985 to 159.02 km² and 30.68 km² in 2018, increasing annually at 3.05% and 3.69% averaged rate, showing an underlying tendency of continuous growth, and magnitude similar to Asian cities. The results of the urban fabric (UF) structures mapping demonstrates a high complexity of the urbanized surfaces, characterized by irregular shapes and variability of urban coverage. In 2019, the TTC metropolitan area was covered by urban land use classes as ceramic roofs, other types of roofs, and impervious surface, in the proportions of 28.02%, 11.97%, and 5.67%, respectively.

A dengue pode estar associada a variáveis de nível individual, como escolaridade, aumentando o risco de adoecimento. O objetivo deste trabalho é analisar as disparidades da mortalidade por dengue entre os menos e mais escolarizados no Brasil entre os anos de 2010 e 2018. Este é um estudo do tipo ecológico retrospectivo das diferenças na taxa de mortalidade por dengue entre menos e mais escolarizados no Brasil, através das taxas de mortalidade por dengue geral, por idade, sexo e Unidade Federativa (UF). Um procedimento de bootstrap e imputação múltipla para a variável escolaridade foram implementados de modo a considerar a estrutura multinível em cada UF dos dados ao longo dos anos. Para cada banco agregado gerado, foi ajustado um modelo de Poisson multinível. A melhoria na escolaridade da população brasileira não refletiu na diminuição da mortalidade por dengue. Houve um aumento na taxa de mortalidade por dengue no Brasil e um crescimento da diferença de taxas de mortalidade entre menos e mais escolarizados. Independentemente do processo de imputação, os resultados mostraram maiores taxas de mortalidade por dengue entre os menos escolarizados. A baixa escolaridade afetou de forma mais pronunciada os mais jovens.