A importância da vigilância dos contatos de hanseníase

Abstract

Introduction. Leprosy is a chronic, contagious disease with slow development, caused by Mycobacterium Leprae, a bacillus with high infectivity and low pathogenicity. The World Health Organization (WHO) has set a target of attaining a level of prevalence of less than one case per 10 000 population, reaching at the global level in the year 2000. Endemic countries such as Brazil were encouraged to reach the target by 2015. Objectives: This study aimed at characterizing people treated with leprosy from 2001 to 2013, in the cities studied, and to take knowledge of contact with another patient before the diagnosis, to check the number of contacts of existing leprosy in the cities and to confirm the actual number of household contacts associating them with collected data from medical records, in addition to their follow-up. Material and Methods. A descriptive cross-sectional study with data collection, inserted into an Excel spreadsheet, analyzed and presented by absolute frequency and relative frequency. Results. Of the 103 patients reported from the years 2001 to 2013 in the cities of Mirassol and Jaci; 46 (44.7%) were excluded, 17.5% from these reported that they lived with a patient and 7.0% had had extra domiciliary contact with some patient. Of the patients who reported having communicatings up to the date of the interview, 7.7% of these became sick. Conclusions. Most treated leprosy patients have low income and education, with an average of three family members as household contact. Contacts not assessed by the health services show a high risk of illness and, most of the communicatings was in the multibacillary forms of the disease. According to the medical records, half of them had no follow-up registries of the communicatings . Surveillance of leprosy contact is a cornerstone for the elimination of the disease.