Oparational research in leprosy public health surveillance:: a proposal

Abstract

Communicable diseases as leprosy remain as a preventable factor to the social and economic development of Brazil. In this country the National Council of Municipal Health Secretaries has introduced a Task force to accelerate the elimination of leprosy with the purpose of helping local managers to accomplish the mission of providing full access of communities to health services capable of diagnosing, treating and curing leprosy cases. However, the transition period for different proposal of controlling endemic diseases shows some constraints due to complex fac tor not well known. In this regard, a bet ter understanding of how behavior, political attitude and the allocation of financial resources to the health sector are factor that act and modify the patterns of this disease is of utmost importance to orient efforts towards is elimination.Without eliminating traditional activities, the main ax of this new approach would be the decisions regarding the perspective of promotion and protection of health in an ample way in order to integrate these activities in the health care issues avoiding the disciplinary and bureaucratic fragmentation present in its way of acting. This ax is coincident, in part, to some research lines recently proposed by WHO. In this regard, the authors suggest four axes for operational research in the filed of leprosy in Brazil: the integrality of care, the quality of care, sustainability and regulation. They also present some details of components of the four axes aiming to contribute to an ample national and international discussion in this field of operational
research.