Inquérito domiciliar sobre as percepções da população em relação à hanseníase em um município hiperendêmico de Minas Gerais

Abstract

Hansens disease involves biological, cultural and social aspects in its dynamics and should be understood as a complex disease. Despite the advance of scientific knowledge, it remains as a public health problem in Brazil, with high detection and prevalence rates in some regions of the country. This situation suggests the existence of a gap between the scientific and technical knowledge of the disease and the appropriation by the population of such knowledge. The lack of knowledge of thepopulation and the misinformation leads to the continuity of the cycle of diseases transmission and the emergence of more severe clinical forms, which contributes to both the maintenance of the disease and the stigma that surrounds it. Th e present study aims at analyzing how the urban population from Almenara perceives the Hansens disease and its relations with the detection rates, the socioeconomic conditions and the access to health services. It is an epidemiological cross-sectional study, configured as a survey. The place of study was the city of Almenara, located in the Jequitinhonha River Valley, State of Minas Gerais. It was used a structured instrument divided into five sections: identification and family composition, housing and environmental conditions, epidemiological and social aspects, service organization aspects and individual participation in disease control. 737 household interviews were conducted in 23 census tracts stratified according to the detectionrates. The epidemiological data were processed and analyzed etatistically using the softwares Epi Info (version 3.5.1), MS Excel (version 2003) and SPSS (version 18). The results showed a predominance of female gender (71.5%) and individuals with both low education and low family income. By comparing the perceptions of individuals from areas with different detection rates of Hansens disease, it was found that this was not the only factor that influences the level of knowledge about thedisease. The level of education, the occurrence of a case in the family, the family income and the access to health services also had influence about that knowledge. The majority of the population from Almenara identifies the Hansens disease as a public health problem in the city, although they do not recognize initiatives to control the endemic and neither look for information about the disease. People mistakenly associate the Hansens disease with other pathologies, confusing scientific knowledge with knowledge of popular origin, or even with prejudices. Therefore it isnecessary to improve levels of health and Hansens disease education, so that individuals be able to act by filling the information gaps, promoting the understanding of the disease and thus reducing the stigma that its carriers face