[Dengue epidemics and press coverage].

The occurrence of successive dengue epidemics in Brazil highlights the importance of information dissemination by the media. As a sphere for mediation in contemporary societies, the news media produce, expand, and circulate information and meanings that affect people's decisions. In order to contribute to the discussion, this study analyzes coverage by the main daily newspaper in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil, on dengue epidemics in that State capital from 1996 to 2000, assessing the priority ascribed to the epidemics as news and the various approaches to the disease. Some 446 news stories were selected, classified according to the themes approached in the titles and in the body of the articles. There was a close relationship between the number of news stories and the number of reported dengue cases, with "peaks" in coverage coinciding with outbreaks. According to this study, the news priority for epidemics and the limited space reserved for prevention highlight the need for epidemiological surveillance services to consider strategies to disseminate information through the mass media, aimed at fostering more participatory interventions that would thus be more efficient in the prevention of epidemics.