Vulnerability to infectious and contagious diseases in daycare center teachers: an observational study

Abstract

Background: The risks caused by infectious and contagious diseases in the school environment are of importance to the conduct of early childhood education in the contemporary world. In this work authors aimed to analyze vulnerability to infectious and contagious diseases in daycare center teachers who work in public institutions in the Municipality of Fortaleza-CE, Brazil.Methods: This was aquanti-qualitative study approach of the descriptive, cross-sectional type, of an exploratory nature. This study was carried out with 30 daycare center teachers from the Municipality of Fortaleza from October to November 2016. Results: The main infectious and contagious diseases that affect children in the daycare center were high rates of two or three comorbidities per child. Regarding the workplace risk to the teachers’ health, 58.6% of the teachers consider that the working in the daycare center does not bring greater risks of illness and 41.4% believe it does.Conclusions: Stress due to the presence of students with viral infections who need to remain in the daycare center, lack of hygiene, rest and inadequate nutrition contribute to the vulnerability to illnesses in the teachers.