Relações entre os espaços rurais e urbanos e as taxas de incidência de malformações congênitas no Brasil

Abstract

It is estimated that about 2% to 5% of live births in the world have some type of malformation detected at birth. The highest prevalence of congenital malformation in Brazil are in Bahia, Distrito Federal, Alagoas, Pernambuco, Ceará, Tocantins and Sergipe. Congenital malformations can result from several factors, including environmental ones. For a better understanding of the distribution of this event in the country, one must consider the complexity and heterogeneity of socioeconomic manifestations observed throughout the territory. In this context, this study aims to characterize the distribution of rates of congenital malformations according to the typologies of rural and urban spaces in Brazil, defined by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE, in portuguese). To this end, secondary data on congenital malformations and the number of live births per municipality of residence of the mother from 2012 to 2017 made available by the Ministry of Health (MS, in portuguese) were used. The concentration of high prevalence of congenital malformations in rural municipalities suggests the need for studies that identify factors that have somehow contributed to congenital malformations, as well as that characterize the access of these populations to health services, in order to better adapt the current public policies to the health needs of these populations.