Geography is a way of thinking: spatial and epidemiological patterns of visceral leishmaniasis in Araçatuba, Presidente Prudente, and Votuporanga - SP, Brazil

Author(s)

Patricia Sayuri Silvestre Matsumoto

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: Presidente Prudente. 2019-06-17.
• Institution: Universidade Estadual Paulista (Unesp). Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia. Presidente Prudente
• Defense date: 2019-05-30
• Advisor: Raul Borges Guimarães

Abstract

In this thesis, we developed a geographic way of thinking about visceral leishmaniasis (VL), a disease with a huge worldwide relevance that affects human beings and animals. We discussed VL as a public health problem in Brazil, analyzing the distribution of cases in the Paulista Western Plateau region. This thesis aims to define and analyze the spatial and epidemiological patterns of VL at the regional and local scale, focusing on the municipalities of Araçatuba, Presidente Prudente, and Votuporanga, all of which are located in the Brazilian state of São Paulo, Brazil. We present the epidemiological landscape of VL and the description of the geographical narrative of public health services aiming to achieve a more complex geographic reasoning based on different concepts of Geography, such as landscape, site-situation, and scale. We employed spatial analysis, for instance Geographic Information System (GIS) and spatial modeling tools, which allowed us to identify two VL patterns in the state of São Paulo: the region of the Paulista Western Plateau and the Inert region, where the first has the highest intensity of cases, and it is, initially, defined by environmental factors, although human actions influence the disease cases spreading. At the local scale, socioeconomic variables, lifestyle, health policies, and environmental characteristics define and are defined in space, establishing a peripheral pattern of disease cases in the cities. The results highlight that VL needs to be understood beyond the geometric space of spatial modeling as it is a phenomenon whose spatial dimension is intrinsic to its social existence. (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 14/27070-1 - Spatial and epidemiological patterns about visceral leishmaniasis in Presidente Prudente, Araçatuba and Votuporanga - SP: a geographical integrated vision
• Grantee: Patricia Sayuri Silvestre Matsumoto
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate