O impacto das doenças tropicais negligenciadas na expectativa de vida do Brasil e das regiões brasileiras: uma análise para o período 2010-2019

Abstract

The Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) refer to a group of twenty diseases that predominantly affect poor communities which are living in tropical and subtropical areas. Such diseases are included in the list of the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations, and they represent a public health problem in Brazil, where they were related to more than 100,000 deaths in the period from 2010 to 2019. This presented study analyzed the recent trends in mortality from NTDs in Brazil and in its regions, as well as regional, gender and age differences in mortality from these diseases. The study also decomposed the effect of changes in mortality from NTDs on the variation in life expectancy, at birth and conditioned by age. A higher concentration of mortality from NTDs was identified in the Central-West of the country, in addition to male excess mortality and higher mortality rates at more advanced ages. Additionally, the results indicate that, in Brazil, the variation in mortality from NTDs in the period of analysis contributed to increase life expectancy at birth by 23 days for women and 20 days for men. The greatest impact (absolute and relative) was registered among women residing in the North region, where the variation in mortality from NTDs contributed to raising life expectancy at age 50 by 1.5 months. The main highlights are the results for women in the North region of the country as well as for men who live in the Central-West region of the country. In both cases, the effects of the variation of mortality from NTDs on life expectancy (at birth and conditioned to ages 10, 30 and 50 years old) were at least equal or greater than one month. The results suggest that, in general, adults and more advanced ages contributed in greater proportion to the recorded impacts. However, despite the results above, it was noticed that the dengue epidemics that happened during the period of analysis limited the identified life expectation gains – which reaffirms dengue as a relevant public health problem in the country. Thus, it is important that health authorities are better prepared to face future dengue epidemics, and that existing flaws in policies to combat Aedes aegypt are identified in detail.