Contribuição da estratégia saúde da família para o controle da tuberculose no Espírito Santo

Abstract

Tuberculosis is a millenary illness that nowadays constitutes serious problem of public health in the whole world. In Brazil the proposal of decentralization of the actions to control this illness has been occurring and enhancing Communitarian Agents of Health Programs and Family Health as a useful strategy that contributes to control the endemic tuberculosis disease in the country. This study aimed to evaluate the contribution of the Family Health Strategy (Estratégia Saúde da Família or ESF in Portuguese) for the tuberculosis control in Espírito Santo State, through the identification and grouping of the counties of the State with different levels of implantation of the ESF; of the demographic and socio-economic differentiation among the groups and through comparison of the ESF groups concerning to the tuberculosis control. Therefore an ecological exploring study was conducted taking the municipal districts of Espírito Santo as unit of analysis from 1993 to 2004, which used census data collected from the systems of information SIAB, SINAN and SIM. Groups the counties were distributed based on the implantation period and in the covering of the ESF. The test of hypotheses ANOVA (Analysis of Variance) was used for the demographic and socioeconomic analysis, and for the comparison among ESF groups according to the control of the tuberculosis. Main results showed a significant reduction of the number of the illness new cases in the groups of cities that had presented long period of ESF implantation. Thus, the study suggests that the ESF is a still in construction in public politics, in the country and in Espírito Santo State, and its consolidation and effectiveness can be noticed along the time, mainly due to the enlargement of the most populous cities covering.