Spatial distribution of syphilis cases in pregnant women in Belém-Pa City
International Journal of Development Research
Spatial distribution of syphilis cases in pregnant women in Belém-Pa City
Received 17th June 2020; Received in revised form 09th July 2020; Accepted 06th August 2020; Published online 23th September 2020
Copyright © 2020, Natália Melazo Mendonça Machado et al., This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Objective: establish the spatial distribution of syphilis cases in pregnant women in the Belém-PA city and analyze its incidence, correlating its occurrence with characteristics. Method: this study is ecological, longitudinal, descriptive and inferential cross-sectional that was carried out in the Belém-PA city, in the period of 2017 and 2018. We analyzed 8 districts and 71 districts of the of Belém-PA city involving 1,171 pregnant women diagnosed with gestational syphilis between 2007 and 2017 during the prenatal care performed by the Unified Health System, using data from the Sistema de Informação de Agravos e Notificações (SINAN) and Secretaria Municipal de Saúde e Meio ambiente (SESMA) de Belém-PA. Results: we observed a heterogeneous distribution of cases over the years, with an important increase starting in 2015. Regarding the sociodemographic profile of pregnant women, the disease affected mainly women aged 19 to 21 years, with low level of education and who started prenatal care in the third trimester of pregnancy. The districts with the highest incidence rates of the disease were Outeiro (20.8 cases/10 thousand women), Entroncamento (19.9 cases/10 thousand women) and Icoaraci (19.0 cases/10 thousand women). The neighborhoods that had the highest incidence rates were Pratinha (236.1 cases / 10 thousand women), Paracurí (74.2 cases/10 thousand women) and Ariramba (70.6 cases/10 thousand women) and had social vulnerability indexes considered high (3.3/3.3) and average (2.8) respectively. Conclusions: we must to consider that gestational syphilis is agreat problem, especially due to its high incidence in the districts of the city. This reinforces the need for further studies that detail the local casuistry involved, aiming to help in the implementation of public policies aimed at improving social assistance aimed at women's health in Belém-PA city.