Spatial distribution of leprosy in areas of risk in Vitoria, State of Espirito Santo, Brazil, 2005 to 2009

Abstract

Introduction: Leprosy remains a relevant public health issue in Brazil. The objective of this study was to analyze the spatial distribution of new cases of leprosy and to detect areas with higher risks of disease in the City of Vitória. Methods: The study was ecologically based on the spatial distribution of leprosy in the City of Vitória, State of Espírito Santo between 2005 and 2009. The data sources used came from the available records of the State Health Secretary of Espírito Santo. A global and local empirical Bayesian method was used in the spatial analysis to produce a leprosy risk estimation, and the fl uctuation effect was smoothed from the detection coeffi cients. Results: The study used thematic maps to illustrate that leprosy is distributed heterogeneously between the neighborhoods and that it is possible to identify areas with high risk of disease. The Pearson correlation coeffi cient of 0.926 (p = 0.001) for the Local Method indicated highly correlated coeffi cients. The Moran index was calculated to evaluate correlations between the incidences of adjoining districts. Conclusions: We identifi ed the spatial contexts in which there were the highest incidence rates of leprosy in Vitória during the studied period. The results contribute to the knowledge of the spatial distribution of leprosy in the City of Vitória, which can help establish more cost-effective control strategies because they indicate specifi c regions and priority planning activities that can interfere with the transmission chain.

Spatial distribution of leprosy in Brazil: a literature review

“…Table 1, Table 2 and Table 3 show the articles' summaries according to the scale used: two evaluated regions/ mesoregions 14,15 ; 13 used the scale of municipalities 10,[16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27] ; 4 evaluated districts [28][29][30][31] ; 6 studied neighborhoods [32][33][34][35][36][37] ; 7 analyzed the census tracts [38][39][40][41][42][43][44] ; and 3 investigated households [45][46][47] . Within each scale, the articles were organized by location: Brazil, Northern, Northeast, Midwest, and Southeast regions.…”

“…Within each scale, the articles were organized by location: Brazil, Northern, Northeast, Midwest, and Southeast regions. In all, 4 approached Brazil 10,16-18 , 7 studied the Northern region or the states of the Amazon region 14,19,20,[38][39][40]45 , 11 focused on the Northeast region [21][22][23]28,[32][33][34][35][36]40,41 , 4 the Midwest region 15,29,37,46 , and 12 the Southeast region [24][25][26][27]30,31,36,37,[42][43][44]47 .…”

Spatial clustering and local risk of leprosy in São Paulo, Brazil

“…In this context, studies demonstrate that populations exposed to social vulnerabilities, such as unhealthy housing conditions, basic sanitation deficits, low per capita income, irregular occupation of places unsuitable for habitation and many people sharing the same house, represent the main factors for leprosy [18,31,34,36,41,42,43], which, in terms of spatial distribution, presents the focal behavior the disease, as evidenced in earlier studies [1,35,44,45,46,47,48]. …”

Análise espacial da prevalência de toxoplasmose em gestantes de Aracaju, Sergipe, Brasil

“…Nossos achados indicam uma prevalência de anticorpos antitoxoplasma de 68,5%, que está de acordo com outros estudos brasileiros [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15] , resultado semelhante à pesquisa realizada em 2007 nesse mesmo município, que evidenciou soropositividade de 77,8% em 2007 8 . A prevalência encontrada é preocupante, considerando-se que o risco de ocorrência de toxoplasmose congênita é elevado quando a prevalência de soropositividade para toxoplasmose encontra-se entre 25 e 80% 16 .…”