Risk factors and infectious etiology of diarrheal disease in the Municipality of Juruti, Pará State, Brazil

Abstract

The Municipality of Juruti, in Pará State, Brazil, has been facing intense environmental and socioeconomic changes due to bauxite exploration, which triggered an intense migratory process caused by job and income opportunities. Because of the impact of this migration on local public health, the local health department with the Instituto Evandro Chagas developed the Projeto Saúde Juruti, which allowed investigation of relevant health problems in the Municipality, such as the diarrheal diseases. The objective of this study was to identify the risk factors and the infectious etiology associated to diarrheal diseases in Juruti, from 2007 to 2010, by statistical techniques such as exploratory data analysis and bivariate analysis. The results demonstrated that the age group under 1 year old and burning of garbage have been identified as possible risk factors for the occurrence of diarrhea. Other variables such as eating habits, safe food handling practices, personal hygiene habits and home cleaning need to be investigated. Among bacterial and parasitic infection causes, bacterial agents were a major cause of diarrhea, highlighting the association of Shigella and pathogenic Escherichia coli, bacterial pathogens to diarrheal cases. Considering these results, we suggest that monitoring actions, such as registration of diarrhea cases, prevention and diarrhea control, keeping the distribution and use of sodium hypochlorite, with health education actions and improved sanitation.