Can the municipal social deprivation index influence the time trend of the leprosy detection rate?

High‐risk transmission clusters of leprosy in an endemic area in the Northeastern Brazil: A retrospective spatiotemporal modelling (2001–2019)

“…As leprosy prevalence is potentially determined by the ethnic and social context of individuals, it affects blacks and browns more than other ethnic groups. Likewise, the risk of leprosy is high among populations living in precarious conditions [2,8,20,30,35]. Factors such as income disparity, social vulnerability index, precarious housing conditions, nutritional deficiency and lower educational level are considered social determinants of health related to the bacillus' [8,15,20].…”

“…Since 1991, Brazil has been part of the group of countries that signed a pact with WHO to reduce cases and control leprosy. As a result, public policies were adopted to improve outpatient diagnosis, such as the promotion of campaigns throughout the nation, and the treatment of cases with the use of MDT [7,22,29,30]. Remarkably, there was a reduction in the absolute number of cases and patients with physical disabilities [7,17,30].…”

“…As a result, public policies were adopted to improve outpatient diagnosis, such as the promotion of campaigns throughout the nation, and the treatment of cases with the use of MDT [7,22,29,30]. Remarkably, there was a reduction in the absolute number of cases and patients with physical disabilities [7,17,30]. Despite that, to date, Brazil remains one of the countries with the highest number of leprosy cases in the world [6].…”

Fatores associados à limitação de atividade em casos novos de hanseníase em município hiperendêmico do Nordeste, Brasil

“…33,35,36 Recentemente, um elevado número de investigações tem buscado compreender a influência dos determinantes sociais na dinâmica de transmissão da hanseníase no Brasil. [35][36][37][38][39][40] Estudos realizados no próprio estado da Bahia mostraram que a manutenção da transmissão pode estar associada a: densidade domiciliar, proporção de extremamente pobres, renda per capita, desigualdade de renda e nível de ocupação. 41,42 Por outro lado, em áreas endêmicas, é possível que as melhorias sociais gerais resultem, pelo menos em um primeiro momento, em aumento do número de diagnósticos, já que diminui a prevalência oculta.…”