Herpeto Cerrado

Why was November chosen?

According to Modesto et al. (2018), the movement originated in Australia from a joke among friends who combined the words "mo" (Australian slang for moustache) and "November": MOVEMBER. They reportedly held a party in which they awarded prizes for the best and worst moustache in 2003. The following year, when they repeated the joke, they decided that Movember could be used to raise awareness among men about a similar problem to the breast cancer campaign: prostate cancer. The campaign aims to increase early detection of cancer, diagnosis and effective treatments, and ultimately reduce the number of preventable deaths.

Today, September 19th, the "International Day of Attention to Snakebite Envenoming" is celebrated.

The date, created by a coalition of organizations working for global health and tropical medicine (BRASIL, 2022), aims to raise awareness about the huge (but still little recognized) global impact of snakebites.

The United Nations - UN, through the World Health Organization - WHO @who (WHO, 2020), established snakebite envenoming as a neglected tropical disease due to several reasons: difficulty of access and efficacy of antivenoms, underreporting, quality of information on deaths and others.

According to WHO (WHO 2022), "4.5 to 5.4 million people are bitten by snakes annually: of these, 1.8-2.7 million develop clinical illnesses and 81,000 to 138,000 die from complications.

In Brazil (BRASIL, 2021), the average number of snakebite occurrences in recent years is approximately 28,000 notifications per year and 116 deaths per year.

REFERENCES

BRASIL. Ministry of Health. (2021). Neglected tropical diseases. Epidemiological Bulletin, Brasília, special issue. Mar, 2021

BRASIL. Ministry of Health. (2022). 9/19 - International Day of Attention to Snakebite Envenoming. Available at: https://bvsms.saude.gov.br/19-9-dia-internacional-de-atencao-aos-acidentes-ofidicos/. Access date: 19/09/2022

WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION - WHO. (2020). Control of neglected tropical diseases (2020). Geneva: WHO. Available at: http://www.who.int/neglected_diseases/diseases/en/. Access date: 14/01/2020.

Herpeto Cerrado

The name emerged in 2005 from the combination of "Herpeto", a shortened version of Herpetology (Greek herpetón + gr lógos+ia - which could be translated as the science that studies crawling creatures), a branch of Zoology that studies reptiles and amphibians) and "Cerrado", also known as Brazilian Savanna, a biome with great biodiversity where the city of Uberlândia, the headquarters of our activities, is located.

In the logo, we have the silhouette of four animals studied by herpetology found in the region:

Rhinella diptycha, a toad commonly known as "cururu" or "sapo-boi";

Salvator merianae, a lizard commonly known as "teiú";

Chelonoidis carbonarius, a tortoise commonly known as "jabuti-piranga";

Boa constrictor, a common boa found in the Cerrado.

Our activities will focus on snakes, but occasionally (until partnerships are established), we will also publish about other groups of animals studied by herpetology. We will also publish about venomous animals, as it is a demand naturally created by the population.

It is with great satisfaction that I use a cliché:

"The Cerrado is art Herpeto is a part"

Those who work with snakes know how difficult it is to sensitize the population and, through access to information, change their behavior and stop killing snakes. When someone who is not in the field promotes the image of these animals, I consider it a collective victory for herpetologists.