Profile of leprosy patients in the state of Paraíba

Abstract

This study has the objective of traces the profile of the leprosy patient in the State of Paraíba. It is resulted of an epidemic study of the type observational, tranverse and of individual base, being used the quantitative method. From 223 municipal districts of Paraíba, we have chosen as inclusion criteria those who demonstrated the higher leprosy incidence. A sample of 6.7% was used. The chosen variables were the same of the card notification of SINAN. A document has been done with closed questions and pre-conditioned answers for the collection of data that were processed by the Program Statistical Package for Social Science. This profile shows that: women get sick of leprosy more than men; there isa predominance of non-alphabetized, with almost 50% of the cards analyzed; more than 50% of the population is in the age group of 25-60 years old; there is a predominance of unknown race/color cases, what means that, the service is not properly considering the data registered; there is no significant differences between paucibacillary and multibacillary cases. In spite of paucibacillary clinical form present a larger number of cases, it did not reveal significant divergences in relation to multibacillary forms. The data revealed that there is no representation in the State concerning the number of lesions, because there are two systems of information; 41.4% of the cases has shown negative bacilloscopy results; in Campina Grande, João Pessoa and Cajazeiras the incidence are bigger.