Sandoval JM, Guedes JS, dos Santos RM; International Society of Technology Assessment in Health Care. Meeting.

Annu Meet Int Soc Technol Assess Health Care Int Soc Technol Assess Health Care Meet. 1997; 13: 166.

Departamento de Saude da Universidade Estadual do Sudoeste da Bahia, Brazil.

Recognizing that quality of life is related also to the socio-cultural and economic conditions of people and that there is therefore a direct relationship to the conditions of health and illness, we carried out this study with the objective of looking for some indicators of the quality of life in urban-marginalized communities. We established priorities for a potential intervention to improve the quality of life of these people. Thus, we surveyed and sampled 256 people, through home visits, to those who live in some of the urban-marginalized municipalities in the state of Bahia, Brazil. The results show that: 78.0% of those surveyed don't work; 91.2% of those who do work earn minimum wage; 85.7% live in mud houses with dirt floors; only 76.8% have running water and electricity; 57.1% are semi-literate or illiterate; 10.7% currently have problems with the police; 35.7% do not receive government assistance. Survival problems include: unemployment, disease, poverty, hard and poor-paying work besides not being paid at all. The principal diseases of the community are: pain in the back, stomach, kidneys, hands and feet, teeth, throat; rheumatism, flu, fever, heart, pneumonia, urinary problems, hypertension, measles, diabetes, typhoid fever, respiratory problems and vision problems. Those surveyed pointed out that: "Government is responsible for resolving all thse problems," and "the most important thing is to be healthy." Only 33.0% are considered poor. The majority spend their free hours talking to friends. We conclude that the quality of life of these people is severely compromised, which demonstrates the need for an emergency intervention to assist these people to live, at the very least, with a minimum of human rights (original in Portuguese).

Publication Types:

• Meeting Abstracts

Keywords:

• Animals
• Brazil
• Data Collection
• Environment
• Health
• Housing
• Humans
• Income
• Life
• Poverty
• Quality of Life
• Residence Characteristics
• Unemployment
• organization & administration
• hsrmtgs

Other ID:

• HTX/98601850

UI: 102233395

From Meeting Abstracts