UTILIZAÇÃO DOS SERVIÇOS DE ATENÇÃO BÁSICA À SAÚDE, PELA POPULAÇÃO INFANTIL, NO ESTADO DO MARANHÃO

Abstract

It was conducted a descriptive study to evaluate the use of Primary Care Services for the child population in Maranhão State with emphasis on Family Health Program in a period from July 2007 to January 2008 with a representative Maranhão State sample of 1711 children, obtained through systematic random sampling by conglomerates. It still aims to trace the evolutive parallel of some current indicators present with similar research conducted in 1996. There was the predominance of male sex, more than three years old and city residents. Demographic data pointed to mothers living with their partners (69.7%), mothers who did not work (55.3%), with low schooling level from 5 to 8 years (33.3%) and the father s schooling level from 1 to 4 years (24.9%), family income until a minimum wage (58.8%). Regarding the conditions of dwelling and sanitation, brick houses (45.9%), water supply by public company (54.4%), excreta destiny in black pit (33.9%), garbage collection (46.0%) with ownership of radio and TV (48.3%). From the total of studied children, 53.3% did have preventive consultation in the first year of life, 61.4% did not make the childcare consultation, among those who carried out the consultation it was realized in the age group from 1 to 6 months (55.8 %), by Single Health System (SHS) (92.1%), in the Basic Unit of Family Health (67.8%). The vast majority reported receiving home visits by Family Health Program (81.6%), with the realization of the child weighing (70.0%) and guidelines for their care, however great part of the mothers reported they did not have orientation regarding the cares face the diarrheas (92.4%). Although the vast majority has the child card (86.8%), the register of child weighing was observed only in an intermediate percentage of them (50.5%) performed most times by the Health Community Agent (53.9 %). The data found out were compared to data from the research "Health, Nutrition and Infant Mortality in Maranhão, developed in 1996 and it was observed that virtually all variables showed positive increasing - focus on improving of the mother s schooling level (from 47% to 63.6% of mothers with more than 4 years of study), reducing the percentage of mothers with no schooling (from 24.4% to 11.3%), appropriate excreta destination (from 25.8% to 32.8%) and the financing of these consultations by SHS (from 78.6% to 92.1%). With this analysis, it emphasizes the improvement of some quality of life indicators and the attention to child health in Maranhão State, although they are not uniform in reduction much needed of infant mortality.