Água de consumo humano distribuída à população e ocorrência de diarréia: um estudo ecológico no município de Vitória/ES

Abstract

Both water quantity and quality are important factors for the establishment of health benefits regarding reduction of the incidence and prevalence of several diseases, among them diarrhea. Brazil is one of the countries with high incidence of diarrhea that rebounds directly on infant mortality rates as a result acute diarrhea. Although of endemic characteristics, diarrhea can be seen as an outbreak when various clinical elements are detected (space-temporal distribution, source of infection). In those circumstances, an investigation process is carried out that allows collecting the necessary information for conducting the appropriate measures by using a Diarrhea Disease Monitoring Program of Ministry of Health. In this study, possible association between water quality and occurrence of cases of diarrhea in 2004 in the municipal district of Vitória in State of Espírito Santo was performed. For the analysis of water quality the programs Control of the Water Quality accomplished by Company Espírito- Santense of Water Suplly and Sanitation and the program of Ministry of Health on Surveillance of the Water Quality accomplished by the Municipal City were used, besides other pertinent data the this research as data of pluviometrics, solar radiation, data of sanitary conditions. The epidemiological design used was the ecological study that utilizes population aggregate data. Georreferencing tools were used to representation the universe and samples and statistical analyses of univariate and multivariate lineal regression. U Mann-Whitney's test was used for comparison of samples of the programs of water quality. The results showed that the samplings of the programs of water quality presented statistical differences. Furthermore, it was found association indexes with statistical significance for the diarrhea occurrence for the turbidity parameters and total and termotolerants coliphorms. These results imply that water distribution must be carefully inspected. Although diarrhea can be cause of several illnesses, actions are necessary to characterize the extent and the source of infection, that in turn would allow to break the transmission chain.sion chain.