Chagas disease prevention through improved housing using an ecosystem approach to health

Abstract

This Chagas disease prevention project via housing improvement aims to determine the efficiencyof different interventions in vector control. The following study describes the target

Ecosystem approaches and health in Latin America

“…These premises have also appeared in recent books published on the theme in Canada 34,35 , whose focus has influenced the research produced in Latin America 21,22,23,24,25 . Thus, it is no coincidence that the five selected articles have their research results published in the special issue of Cadernos de Saúde Pública/Reports in Public Health entitled An Ecological Approach to Human Health: Emerging and Communicable Diseases, which resulted from an event organized and financed by the Canadian International Development Research Centre (IDRC) at the Brazilian National School of Public Health in November 1999.…”

“…Only one of the nine studies was published by a Brazilian researcher 3 . The others are distributed geographically as follows: four by Latin America researchers, namely from Peru 21 , Colombia 22,23 , Paraguay 24 , and Argentina 25 ; two by Canadian researchers 26,27 ; one by a Swedish researcher 28 ; and one involving cooperation between researchers from Kenya, Sweden, and Italy 29 .…”

“…The other four articles 21,22,23,24 involve assembling pictures that allowed combining a larger set of information divided into two major groups, systematized in Tables 2, 3, 4, and 5. The first set dealt with spatial scales, collecting information at the individual/family/household/residential (Table 2), neighborhood/village/community (Table 3), landscape/municipal (Table 4), and regional/national/global levels ( Table 5).…”

“…Hygiene practices associated with environmental health 21 Access to quality water for human consumption 21 Vector-favorable household microclimatic conditions 24 Construction materials 23,24 Forms and places in landscape occupation (whether near the forest or periphery) 22,23 Location and type of building materials (closer to the forest and more isolated from the village) 23 Socioeconomic status and food expenses 21 Income by source 21 Productivity in the economic activity 21 Health education as an element for reducing care for malaria cases 22 Availability of financial resources limiting the use of health services and preventive measures 22 Fish tanks as sources of both family income and potential vector foci 22 Impact of morbidity on the disease influencing productivity 24 Subsistence economy 24 Land tenure, family farming, and family income 24 Access to foodstuffs with quality diet 21 Family-level decisions (mother) on use of preventive measures or health services 22 Women making decisions on the family's health and home improvements 22 Morbidity and deterioration of living conditions 24 Schooling 24 Social stigma of persons with diseases 24 Jobs for housing improvements 24 Community participation in control and surveillance strategies (including schools) 24 Knowledge, beliefs, and practices leading to actions favoring or preventing disease 22 Practices allowing greater exposure to vector in the household or peri-domicile 22 Interruption of work activities to provide care for sick individuals 22 Perception of the disease 24 Incorporation of rural culture in the urban environment 24 Use of housing 24 Home ownership 24 Sustainable conditions for vector and species domiciliation 24 Fami...…”

“…Also in relation to regulation services, climatic aspects (rainfall, humidity, temperature, global warming, El Niño, La Niña) appear in the articles by Carrasquilla 22 , Rojas 23 , and Rojasde-Arias 24 , and as environmental/ecological dimensions, but situated on the regional or global scale ( Table 5). The dimensions that the authors referred to as ecosystem-related focused on ecosystem regulation services and dealt with climatic aspects 23,24 , ranging from the residential level (as a function of the building materials and their geographic location near forests) to the regional and global levels (as a function of alteration in the landscape and global climate changes). At the residential level (Table 2), the attempt was to indicate how such factors favor the presence and increase in the vector population at the regional and glob- Table 3 Aggregation: neighborhood/village/community -dimensions/scales and variables present in a study adopting ecosystem approaches.…”