Análise dos riscos e vulnerabilidades ambientais e seus impactos na saúde da população residente em uma bacia hidrográfica em São Luís-MA

Abstract

One of the goals of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is to achieve universal and equitable access to safe, affordable drinking water for all by 2030. It has been observed that in the Bacanga river basin, located in the municipality of São Luís, human interventions on the environment have caused changes that influence the health level of the population living in the region. The relationship between the environment, basic sanitation and waterborne diseases has enabled us to identify situations that expose the population to health problems. Through this research, we sought to answer the following question: what is the relationship between health and the environment faced by the population living in the Bacanga River Basin region? The hypothesis is that human interventions have directly affected the environmental quality of the basin, and the pollution resulting from these interventions directly interferes with the health of this population. The general objective was to analyze the environmental risks and their impacts on the health of the population living in the Bacanga river basin. This is an ecological study with a systemic approach, observational and descriptive research. In the methodological procedures, the study population sampling is based on secondary data of public access and domain, extracted from the Hospital Information System, whose inclusion criteria were the occurrence of records of hospital admissions, with a primary diagnosis of diarrhea and gastroenteritis of presumed infectious origin, postal address code within the limits of the basin, in the period from 2020 to 2022. Geostatistical techniques were applied to analyze the spatial distribution of hospitalizations due to Waterborne Diseases. An on-site investigation linked to iconographic research and assessment of the landscape based on environmental perception was also carried out. As a result, it was found: the concentration of diseases within the limits of the study area, mostly in the urban perimeter of the municipality of São Luís - State of Maranhão; record of cases with location bordering territories of neighboring municipalities; a heterogeneity in the distribution of the diseases, when temporality is assessed, with a greater amplitude in the year 2022; and also, the presence of two clusters of cases, one within the study area and the other in a border area between municipalities on the island of Maranhão. It is concluded that it is important to implement geostatistical techniques that assist in the analysis of the distribution of health events, in this case, waterborne diseases.