Caracterização especial e identificação dos pontos de abrigos de quirópteros e sua relação com os casos de raiva no semiárido paraibano, Brasil.

Abstract

This Master’s thesis comprises two chapters. Chapter 1 presents a literature review that focuses on rabies as a zoonosis that undergoes several epidemiological cycles. Bats are animals with a variety of feeding habits which are directly related to important ecological functions. However, the best known ones are associated to negative interactions for being hematophagous (feed on the blood of birds and mammals). The species Desmodus rotundus, feeds strictly on the blood of mammals and it is currently considered the number one responsible for spreading the rabies virus in rural regions, especially on cattle. The changes in the natural environments, including the Caatinga biome, which stretches throughout most of the Paraíba state territory in Brazil, caused unbalances in the nature, thus reactivating zoonosis that had been inoperative, such as rabies. In order to impede the resurgence of diseases that involve various cycles, mechanisms of predictability in risks zones must be employed. Geoprocessing tools such as the SIG (Brazilian acronym for Geographic Information System) might estimate the vulnerable areas to the virus through spacing of georreferenced data of the sites and places of conviviality with the illness-transmitting animals. Chapter 2 describes an experience conducted with the objective of characterizing spatially the bats’ shelters and the events of rabies in the semi-arid regions (droughty lands) of Paraíba. This work included data from the SEDAP (Brazilian acronym for Paraíba Farming and Ranching Activities Development State Department) between 2007 and 2015; as well as information from the IBGE (Brazilian acronym for Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics) digital platform; and even a mosaic image of the INPE (Brazilian acronym for National Institute for Space Research). The geographical representations were produced on QGIS 2.16.0 – Nodebo software with a cartographic mesh from the IBGE and Paraíba State Executive Agency of Water Management. Over the period between the years of 2007 and 2015, 93 bat shelters and 51 occurrences of rabies were catalogued at all state’s mesoregions. Based on the georeferenced shelters, 10-kilometer-buffers were plotted to verify the sites of larger risk of circulation of the rabies virus. Within a 10-kilometer-radius, over 80 towns are in the risk zone of the virus circulation as well as a few other municipalities from the neighboring states of Pernambuco, Ceará and Rio Grande do Norte that are located right on their states’ borders. Isolated cases of rabies infections far from the catalogued shelters show the need for expanding the efforts of identifying the bats’ shelters especially the ones where D. rotundus are present. The undernotes of rabies infections within the state 11 demonstrate that government authorities must provide better information to the farmers about the raise of nerve diseases in the cattle, as well as increase the amount of notifications of the presence of D. rotundus in the region.