EPIDEMIOLOGY OF LEPROSY AND THE RELATIONSHIP WITH SOCIAL DETERMINANTS AND SUSTAINABILITY

Abstract

Leprosy is an infectious, communicable, notifiable disease, considered a public health problem, with a high morbidity rate, whose etiological agent is Mycobacterium leprae, an acid-fast bacillus. Thus, the objective of this study was to carry out a bibliographic survey on the impact of leprosy in Brazil and its main implications for public health. This is an Integrative Literature Review. The search process took place by crossing the exact descriptors in health sciences: "leprosy; social vulnerability", with the Boolean operator AND. The crossing of descriptors in the selected databases returned 30 studies. Of these, 17 were in LILACS, 03 in BDENF, 05 in MEDLINE and 05 in SCIELO. A total of 18 studies were submitted to the full reading process. Of the studies included, all were in the area of epidemiology and public health. Sustainability, as it was well explained in the course of the research, is anchored in environmental impact, climate change, uncontrolled urbanization and environmental degradation can influence the transmission of the disease; sustainability of control programs, with prioritization of promotion, prevention, treatment and rehabilitation actions, with equity in health services and social sustainability, through the involvement of the community with disease control actions in a social and economic way.