"It was 3 a.m. on Feb. 6 when the dengue field hospital in Brasília temporarily shut its doors.
The generator powering the medical facility had blown and the 29 members of the Brazilian Air Force in charge had to change it before they could see patients again. Medical professionals who'd been trained to care for dengue patients, they expected to attend to up to 600 people with suspected cases per day. In the first 24 hours after the doors opened on Feb. 5, they saw 1,300. The generator couldn't keep up.
As they worked through the middle of the night and into the wee hours of the morning to get power back to the tents set up next to the neighborhood emergency care unit, a new line started to form. By the time the new generator was in place at 8 a.m., some people had been waiting for hours, sitting on the ground in an attempt to stave off dizziness, headache and body aches from a disease so painful it's known as "breakbone fever.""
Jill Langlois reports for NPR March 4, 2024.
SEE ALSO:
"Dengue Fever Is Spreading With Climate Change and Urbanization" (Sierra)
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